IMAGE  EVALUATION 
TEST  TARGET  (MT-3) 


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<- 


1.0 


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lii  |2B     |2.5 
12.0 


2.2 


Wtftk 


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Photographic 

^Sciences 

Corporation 


23  WIST  MAIN  STRUT 

WnSTIR.N.Y.  MSIO 

(716)I72-4S03 


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CIHM/ICMH 

Microfiche 

Series. 


CIHM/ICMH 
Collection  de 
microfiches. 


Canadian  Institute  for  Historical  Microreproductions  /  instltut  Canadian  de  microreproductions  historiques 


Technical  and  Bibliographic  Notes/Notes  techniques  et  bibliographiques 


The  Institute  has  attempted  to  obtain  the  best 
original  copy  available  for  filming.  Features  of  this 
copy  which  may  be  bibliographically  unique, 
which  may  alter  any  of  the  images  in  the 
reproduction,  or  which  may  significantly  change 
the  usual  method  of  filming,  are  checked  below. 


D 


D 


n 


D 


D 


Coloured  covers/ 
Couverture  de  couleur 


I      I    Covers  damaged/ 


Couverture  endommagde 

Covers  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Couverture  restaurde  et/ou  pelliculde 


I      I    Cover  title  missing/ 


Le  titre  de  couverture  manque 

Coloured  maps/ 

Cartes  gdographiques  en  couleur 

Coloured  ink  (i.e.  other  than  blue  or  black)/ 
Encre  de  couleur  (i.e.  autre  que  bleue  ou  noire) 


I      I    Coloured  plates  and/or  illustrations/ 


Planches  et/ou  illustrations  en  couleur 

Bound  with  other  material/ 
Relid  avec  d'autres  documents 

Tight  binding  may  cause  shadows  or  distortion 
along  interior  margin/ 

La  re  Mure  serr6e  peut  causer  de  I'ombre  ou  de  la 
distortion  le  long  de  la  marge  int6rieure 

Blank  leaves  added  during  restoration  may 
appear  within  the  text.  Whenever  possible,  these 
have  been  omitted  from  filming/ 
II  se  peut  que  certaines  pages  blanches  ajout6es 
lors  d'une  restauration  apparaissent  dans  le  texte, 
mais,  lorsque  cela  itait  possible,  ces  pages  n'ont 
pas  6t6  filmdes. 

Additional  comments:/ 
Commentaires  suppl^mentaires; 


The  c 
to  thi 


L'Institut  a  microfilm^  le  meilleur  exemplaire 
qu'il  lui  a  dtd  possible  de  se  procurer.  Les  details 
de  cet  exemplaire  qui  sont  peut-dtre  uniques  du 
point  de  vue  bibliographique,  qui  peuvent  modifier 
une  image  reproduite,  ou  qui  peuvent  exiger  une 
modification  dans  la  mdthode  normale  de  filmage 
sont  indiquds  ci-dessous. 


D 
D 
D 
0 
D 
GO 
□ 
D 
D 
D 


Coloured  pages/ 
Pages  de  couleur 

Pages  damaged/ 
Pages  endommagdes 

Pages  restored  and/or  laminated/ 
Pages  restaurdes  et/ou  pellicul6es 

Pages  discoloured,  stained  or  foxed/ 
Pages  ddcolordes.  tachetdes  ou  piqudes 

Pages  detached/ 
Pages  d6tach6es 

Showthrough/ 
Transparence 

Quality  of  print  varies/ 
Quality  indgale  de  I'impression 

Includes  supplementary  material/ 
Comprend  du  materiel  suppl^mentaire 

Only  edition  available/ 
Seule  Edition  disponible 

Pages  wholly  or  partially  obscured  by  errata 
slips,  tissues,  etc.,  have  been  ref limed  to 
ensure  the  best  possible  image/ 
Les  pages  totalement  ou  partiellement 
obscurcies  par  un  feuillet  d'errata,  une  pelure. 
etc.,  ont  6t6  film^es  d  nouveau  de  fapon  d 
obtenir  la  meilleure  image  possible. 


This  item  is  filmed  at  the  reduction  ratio  checked  below/ 

Ce  document  est  film6  au  taux  de  reduction  indiqu6  ci-dessous. 

10X  14X  18X  22X 


12X 


16X 


Theii 
possi 
of  thi 
filmir 


Origii 
begin 
the  la 
sion, 
other 
first  f 
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Theli 
shall  I 
TINUI 
whict 

Maps 
differi 
entire 
begin 
right  i 
requir 
meth( 


26X 


30X 


20X 


24X 


28X 


n 

32X 


The  copy  filmed  here  has  been  reproduced  thanks 
to  the  generosity  of: 

National  Library  of  Canada 


L'exemplaire  film6  f ut  reproduit  grdce  d  la 
g6n6ro8it6  de: 

Bibliothdque  nationale  du  Canada 


The  images  appearing  here  are  the  best  quality 
possible  considering  the  condition  and  legibility 
of  the  original  copy  and  in  keeping  with  the 
filming  contract  specifications. 


Les  images  suivantes  ont  dt6  reproduites  avec  le 
plus  grand  soin,  compte  tenu  de  la  condition  et 
de  la  nettetd  de  l'exemplaire  film6,  et  en 
conformity  avec  les  conditions  du  contrat  de 
filmage. 


Original  copies  in  printed  paper  covers  are  filmed 
beginning  with  the  front  cover  and  ending  on 
the  last  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, or  the  back  cover  when  appropriate.  All 
other  original  copies  are  filmed  beginning  on  the 
first  page  with  a  printed  or  illustrated  impres- 
sion, and  ending  on  the  last  page  with  a  printed 
or  illustrated  impression. 


The  last  recorded  frame  on  each  microfiche 
shall  contain  the  symbol  -^(meaning  "CON- 
TINUED"), or  the  symbol  V  (meaning  "END"), 
whichever  applies. 


Les  exemplaires  originaux  dont  la  couverture  en 
papier  est  imprimie  sont  fiimds  en  commenpant 
par  le  premier  plat  et  en  terminant  soit  par  la 
dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  le  second 
plat,  selon  le  cas.  Tous  les  autres  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  film^s  en  commenpant  par  la 
premidre  page  qui  comporte  une  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  dernidre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  des  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
dernidre  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  le 
cas:  le  symbols  — ►  signifie  "A  SUIVRE  ",  le 
symbols  y  signifie  "FIN". 


Maps,  plates,  charts,  etc.,  may  be  filmed  at 
different  reduction  ratios.  Those  too  large  to  be 
entirely  included  in  one  exposure  are  filmed 
beginning  in  the  upper  left  hand  corner,  left  to 
right  and  top  to  bottom,  as  many  frames  as 
required.  The  following  diagrams  illustrate  the 
method: 


Les  cartes,  planches,  tableaux,  etc.,  peuvent  dtre 
fiim6s  d  des  taux  de  reduction  diffdrents. 
Lorsque  ie  document  est  trop  grand  pour  dtre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  clichd,  il  est  filmd  d  partir 
de  I'angle  sup6rieur  gauche,  de  gauche  it  droite, 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  le  nombre 
d'images  ndcessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  m6thode. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

Primitive  Culture 


JRESEARCHES  INTO  THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF 
MYTHOLOGY,  PHILOSOPHY,  RELIGION, 
LANGUAGE,  ART  AND  CUSTOM  . 


BT 

EDWARD  B.  TYLOR,  LL.D.,  F.R.S 

Autlwr  of  "  Researches  into  the  Early  IRstory  of  Mankind,"  Ae 


••Ce  n'est  pas  dans  lea  posslbUltes.  c'eat  duns 
ITiomme  meme  qu'll  fuut  eliullcr  ri'omme:  11 
ne  s'agll  pus  criniaginer  ce  qii'il  nurolt  p\i  ou 
da  faire,  mats  de  regarder  ce  qu'il  full." 

— Db  Bbossbs 


THIRD  AMERICAN,  FROM  TEE  SECOND  ENGLISH  EDITION 


IN    TWO    VOLUMES 


Volume  I 


NEW  rORK 

HENBY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

1889 


AUTHOR'S  edition: 


')  r 


PKEFACE   TO   THE   FIKST   EDITIOI^. 


The  present  volumes,  uniform  with  the  previous 
vohune  of  "  Researches  hito  tlie  Early  History  of 
.Alankind  "  (1st  Ed.  1865 ;  2nd  Ed.  1870),  carry  on 
the  investio^ation  of  Culture  into  other  branches  of 
thought  and  belief,  art  and  custom.  During  the  past 
six  years,  I  have  taken  occasion  to  bring  tentatively 
before  the  public  some  of  the  principal  points  of 
new  evidence  and  •  argument  here  advanced.  The 
doctrine  of  survival  in  culture,  the  bearing  of  directly- 
expressive  language  and  the  invention  of  numerals  on 
the  problem  of  early  civilization,  the  place  of  myth  in 
the  primitive  history  of  the  human  mind,  the  develop- 
ment of  the  animistic  philosophy  of  religion,  and  the 
origin  of  rites  and  ceremonies,  have  been  discussed  in 
various  papers  and  lectures,*  before  being  treated  at 
large  and  with  a  fuller  array  of  facts  in  this  work. 

The  authorities  for  the  facts  stated  in  the  text  are 


•  Fortnightly  Review  :  'Origin  of  Language,'  April  16,  1866  ;  'Religion 
of  Savages,'  Augint  15,  1866.  Lectures  at  Royal  Institution  ;  'Traces  of  the 
Eiirly  Mental  Ccndition  of  Man,'  March  15,  1867;  'Survival  of  Savage 
Tliought  in  Modern  Civilization,'  April  23,  1869.  Lecture  at  University 
College,  London  :  '  Spiritualistic  Pliilosojthy  of  the  Lower  Races  of  Mankind,' 
May  S,  1869.  Paper  read  at  British  Association,  Nottingham,  1866 :  '  Phono- 
mena  uf  Civilization  TraecaMe  to  a  Rudinicntal  Origin  among  Savage  Tribes.' 
Paper  read  at  Etimological  Society  of  London,  April  26,  1870  :  '  Philosophy 
of  Religion  among  the  Lower  Races  of  Mankind,'  &c.  &o. 


VI 


PREFACE. 


fully  specified  in  the  foot-notes,  which  must  also  serve 
as  my  general  acknowledgment  of  obligations  to 
writers  on  ethnography  and  kindred  sciences,  as  well 
as  to  historians,  travellers,  and  missionaries.  I  will 
only  mention  apart  two  treatises  of  which  I  have  made 
especial  use :  the  '  IMensch  in  der  Geschichte,'  by 
Professor  Bastian  of  Berlin,  and  the  'Anthropologic 
der  Naturvolker,'  by  the  late  Professor  Waitz  of 
Marburg. 

In  discussing  problems  so  complex  as  those  of  the 
development  of  civilization,  it  is  not  enough  to  put  for- 
ward theories  accompanied  by  a  few  illustrative 
examples.  The  statement  of  the  facts  must  form  the 
staple  of  the  argument,  and  the  limit  of  needful 
detail  is  only  reached  when  each  group  so  displays  its 
general  law,  that  fresh  cases  come  to  range  themselves 
in  their  proper  niches  as  new  instances  of  an  already 
established  rule.  Should  it  seem  to  any  readers  that 
my  attempt  to  reach  this  limit  sometimes  leads  to  the 
heaping  up  of  too  cumbrous  detail,  I  would  point  out 
that  the  theoretical  novelty  as  well  as  the  practical 
importance  of  many  of  the  issues  raised,  make  it  most 
unadvisable  to  stint  them  of  their  full  evidence.  In 
the  course  of  ten  years  chiefly  spent  in  these  researches, 
it  has  been  my  constant  task  to  select  the  most  instruc- 
tive ethnological  facts  from  the  vast  mass  on  record, 
and  by  lopping  away  unnecessary  matter  to  reduce  the 
data  on  each  problem  to  what  is  indispensable  for 
reasonable  proo£ 


E.  B.  T. 


March,  1871. 


PKEFACE   TO  THE   SECOND   EDITION. 


Since  the  publication  of  this  work  in  1871, 
translations  have  appeared  in  German  and  Russian. 
In  the  present  edition,  the  form  of  page  has  been 
slightly  altered,  for  convenience  of  re-issue  at  once  in 
England  and  America.  The  matter,  however,  remains 
substantially  the  same.  A  few  passages  have  been 
amplified  or  altered  for  greater  clearness,  and  on  some 
points  additional  or  improved  evidence  has  been  put 
in.  Among  the  anthropologists  whose  published 
reviews  or  private  communications  have  enabled  me 
to  correct  or  strengthen  various  points,  T  will  only 
mention  by  name  Professor  Felix  Liebrec  i,  of  Li^ge, 
Mr.  Clements  R.  Markham,  Professor  Calderwood, 
Mr.  Ralston,  and  Mr.  Sebastian  Evans. 

It  may  have  struck  some  readers  as  an  omission, 
that  in  a  work  on  civilization  insisting  so  strenuously 
on  a  theory  of  development  or  evolution,  mention 
should  scarcely  have  been  made  of  Mr.  Darwin  and 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  whose  influence  on  the  whole 
course  of  modern  thought  on  such  subjects  should  not 
be  left  without  formal  recognition.  This  absence  of 
particular  reference  is  accounted  for  by  the  present 


#«,■..■■<    v.*^»«J-. 


•  •  • 

VIU 


PREFACE. 


work,  arranged  on  its  own  lines,  coming  scarcely  into 
contact  of  detail  with  the  previous  works  of  these 
eminent  philosophers. 

An  objection  made  by  several  critics  as  to  the  accu- 
mulation of  evidence  in  these  volumes  leads  me  to  re- 
mark, with  sincere  gratification,  that  this  objection  has 
in  fact  been  balanced  by  solid  advantage.  The  plan  of 
collecting  wide  and  minute  evidence,  so  that  readers 
may  have  actually  before  them  the  means  of  judging 
the  theory  put  forward,  has  been  justified  by  the 
reception  of  the  book,  even  in  circles  to  whose  views 
many  of  its  arguments  are  strongly  adverse,  and  that 
in  matters  of  the  first  importance.  Writers  of  most 
various  philosophical  and  theological  schools  now 
admit  that  the  ethnological  facts  are  real,  and  vital, 
and  have  to  be  accounted  for.  It  is  not  too  much  to 
say  that  a  perceptible  movement  of  public  opinion  has 
here  justified  the  belief  that  the  English  mind,  not 
readily  swayed  by  rhetoric,  moves  freely  under  the 
pressure  of  facts. 

E.B.T. 

September^  187t. 


■it  '  1. 


CONTENTS 


OF 


THE    FIRST    VOLUME. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  SCIENCE  OF  CULTURE. 

Oaltnre  or  Civilization — Its  phenomena  related  according  to  definite 
Laws — Method  of  classification  and  discussion  of  the  evidence — 
Connexion  of  successive  stages  of  culture  by  Pennaneuce,  Modi- 
fication, and  Survival—Principal  topics  examined  in  the  present 
work 


PAoa 


CHAPTER  II. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


Stages  of  culture,  industrial,  intellectual,  political,  moral — Develop- 
ment of  culture  in  great  measure  corresponds  with  transition 
from  savage  through  barbaric  to  civilized  life — Progression-theory 
—Degeneration-theory— Development-theory  includes  both,  the 
one  as  primary,  the  other  as  secondary — Historical  and  tradi- 
tional evidence  not  available  aa  to  low  stages  of  culture — Histo- 
rical evidence  as  to  principles  of  Degeneration — Ethnological 
evidence  as  to  rise  and  fall  in  culture,  from  comparison  of  dif- 
ferent levels  of  culture  in  branches  of  the  same  race — Extent 
of  historically  recorded  antiquity  of  civilization— Prehistoric 
Archasology  extends  the  antiquity  of  man  in  low  stages  of  civili- 
Eation — Traces  of  Stone  Age,  corroborated  by  megalithic  struo* 
tores,  lake-dwellings,  shell-heaps,  burial-places,  etc.,  prove  ori- 
ginal low  culture  throughout  the  world—Stages  of  progressive 
Development  in  industrial  arts 26 


'Ua 


C0.VTENT3. 

CHAPTfiB  ril. 

CHAPTER  IV. 
SUm-VAL  IN  CULTURE  !      .- 

-Ma^cal  procetf  Con^f  "^  "^  ^'>h«  to  lower  ««^ 
-^ngury,  etc.- Oneirnn?  ?  Association  of  Idpm.    !^     "**" 

«>niancy,  etc  -  r?J     ^^''^-^'^spication   L!f  T~°'"'°«~ 
Coscino^C^,  ete^^ST-  ^^•-^^-bdoi^J^j^^-^^.  ^^ 

poetical  bearii  ^f  th«  .^'f-^^^^o^ances  J «£,  !!^^.^P'"<^ 
*^  ot  the  study  of  Survival    .  »»edmni»- 


CHAPTER   V 
directly  cxpressiv,  s„„.j  ,^  ,  ""i^B. 


lU 


Be^onto,  directly  e„r  "^"™  '^^^<"'^«a 

CHAPTER   VI 
EMOTIONAL  AND  IMlTATrvT.  r 
I^it.tive    Wo«..Hu.an    allT  "^"'^  ^-''^'•"->- 

Ration  Of  :^wetreSs:S^  ---K^u^Wr^^^ 
Language-Sound-wordfr    i   ^°"^  ^^^  difference-f  m.7     . 
original  product  lttZ^       ""^'^''-''^  *<>  Sense-worr   r       '^^^°  « 
i'  wiucc  of  the  lower  Culture  °^*^~-^aaguage  an 

soo 


CONTENTS. 


Zl 


CHAPTER  VII. 
THE  ART  OP  COUNTING. 


PAOB 


Ideas  of  Nnmber  derived  from  experience — State  of  aritbmetio  among^ 
uncivilized  races — Small  extent  of  Numeral-worda  among  low 
tribes— Counting  by  fingers  and  toes — Hand-numerals  show  deri- 
vation of  Verbal  reckoning  from  Gesture-counting— Etymology  of 
Numerals— Quinary,  Decimal,  and  Vigesimal  notations  of  the 
world  derived  from  counting  on  fingers  and  toes — Adoption  of 
foreign  Numeral-words — Evidence  of  development  of  Arithmetic 
from  a  low  original  level  of  Culture 840 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
MYTHOLOGY. 

Njrthio  fancy  based,  like  other  thought,  on  Experience — Mythology 
affords  evidence  for  studying  laws  of  Imagination— Change  in 
public  opinion  as  to  cie'libility  of  Myths — Myths  rationalized 
into  allegory  and  history— Ethnolon-ical  import  and  treatment  of 
Myth — Myth  to  be  studied  in  actual  existence  and  growth  among 
modern  savages  and  barbarians — Original  sources  of  Myth — Early 
doctrine  of  general  Animation  of  Nature — Personification  of  Sun, 
Moon,  and  Stars  ;  Water-spout,  Sand-pillar,  Rainbow,  Water-fall, 
Pestilence — Analogy  worked  into  Myth  and  Metaphor— Myths  of 
Rain,  Thunder,  etc.— Effect  of  Language  in  formation  of  Myth — 
Material  Personification  primary,  Verbal  Pcrsinification  secondary 
^Grammatical  Gender,  male  and  female,  animate  and  inanimate, 
in  relation  to  Myth— Proper  Names  of  Oi)ject3  in  relation  to 
Myth — Mental  state  proper  to  promote  mythic  imagination — 
Doctrine  of  Werewolves — Phantasy  and  Fancy     .... 


278 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MYTHOLOGY  {continned). 

Nature-myths,  their  origin,  canon  of  interpretation,  preservation  of 
original  sense  and  significant  names— Nature-myths  of  upper 
savage  races  compared  with  related  forms  among  barbaric  and 
civilized  nations  — Heaven  and  Eaith  as  Universal  Parents — Sun 
and  Moon  :  Eclipse  and  Sunset,  as  Hero  or  Maiden  svvalloived  by 
Monster  ;  Rising  of  Sun  from  Sea  and  Descent  to  Under-world  | 
Jaws  of  Xight  and  Death,  Symplegades  ;  Eye  of  Heaven,  Eye  of 
Odin  and  the  Graiaj — Sun  and  Moon  as  mythic  civilizera — Moon, 
her  inconstancy,  periodical  death  and  revival— Stars,  their  gene- 
ration— Constellations,  their  place  in  Mythology  and  Astronomy 
—Wind  and  Tempest— Thunder — Earthquake       .... 


316 


Zll 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  X. 
MYTHOLOGY  {contimed). 


wapt 


Philosophical  Myths :  inferences  become  pseudo-history — Geological 
Myths — Effect  of  doctrine  of  Miracles  on  Mythology  —Magnetic 
Mountain — Myths  of  relation  of  Apes  to  Men  by  development  or 
degeneration— Ethnological  import  of  myths  of  Ape-men,  Men 
with  tails,  Men  of  the  woods— Myths  of  Error,  Perversion,  and 
Exaggeration  :  stories  of  Giants,  Dwarfs,  and  Monstrous  Tribes 
of  men— Fanciful  explanatory  Myths— Myths  attached  to  legen- 
dary or  historical  Personages— Etymological  Myths  on  names  of 
places  and  persons— Eponyniic  Myths  on  names  of  tribes, 
nations,  countries,  etc.  ;  their  ethnological  import — Pragmatic 
Myths  by  realization  of  metaphors  and  ideas — Allegory— Beast- 
Fable — Conclusion 8B8 


CHAPTER  XL 

ANIMISM. 

Beligious  ideas  generally  appear  among  low  races  of  Mankind — 
Neg.'itive  statements  on  this  subject  frequently  misleading  and 
mistaken  :  many  cases  uncertain — Minimum  definition  of  Reli- 
gion— Doctrine  of  Spiritual  Beings,  here  termed  Animism — 
Animism  treated  as  belonging  to  Natural  Religion— Animism 
divided  into  two  sections,  the  philosophy  of  Souls,  and  of  other 
Spirits — Doctrine  of  Souls,  its  prevaleuoe  and  definition  among 
the  lower  races— Definition  of  Appariti  mal  Soul  or  Ghost-Soul — 
It  is  a  theoretical  cuuception  of  priinibive  Philisophy,  desigued 
to  acoount  for  phenomena  now  classed  under  Biology,  especially 
Life  and  Death,  Health  and  Disease,  Sleep  and  Dreams,  Trance 
and  Visions — Relation  of  Soul  in  name  and  nature  to  Shadow, 
Blood,  Jireath  -  Division  or  Plurality  of  Souls— Soul  cause  of 
Life  ;  its  restoration  to  body  when  supposed  absent — Exit  of  Soul 
in  Trances — Dreams  and  Visions  :  theory  of  exit  of  dreamer's  or 
seer's  own  soul ;  theory  of  visits  received  by  them  from  other 
souls— Ghost-Soul  seen  in  Apparitions — Wraiths  and  Doubles- 
Soul  has  form  of  Body  ;  suff.rs  mutilation  with  it — Voice  of 
Ghost— Soul  treated  and  deiini  d  as  of  Material  Substance  ;  this 
appears  to  be  the  original  doctrine — Transmission  of  Souls  to 
service  in  future  life  by  Funeral  Sacrifice  of  wives,  attendants, 
etc. — Souls  of  Animals— Their  transmission  by  Funeral  Sacrifice 
— Souls  of  Plants— Souls  of  Objects  -  Their  transmission  by 
Funeral  Sacrifice— Relation  of  savage  doctrine  of  Object-Souls  to 
Epicurean  theory  of  Ideas — Historical  development  of  DocLriue 
of  Souls,  from  the  Ethereal  Soul  of  primitive  Biology  to  the  Im- 
matenai  Soul  of  modem  Theology 


417 


v>' 


;.)■'■      .\ 


'  r,  iHOi) 


...  ■c^'% 


^■^ 


PEIMITIVE    CULTURE. 


CHAPTER    I. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 

Caltuie  or  Civilization — Its  phenomena  related  according  to  definite  Laws  - 
Method  of  classification  and  discussion  of  the  evidence— Connexion  of 
successive  stages  of  culture  by  Permanence,  Modification,  and  SurviTal — 
Principal  topics  examined  in  the  present  work. 

Culture  or  Civilization,  taken  in  its  wide  ethnographic 
sense,  is  that  complex  whole  which  includes  knowledge,  be- 
lief, art,  morals,  law,  custom,  and  any  other  capabilities  and 
habits  acquired  by  man  as  a  member  of  society.  The  con- 
dition of  culture  among  tlie  various  societies  of  mankind,  in 
so  far  as  it  is  capable  of  being  investigated  on  general 
principles,  is  a  subject  apt  for  the  study  of  laws  of  human 
thought  and  action.  On  the  one  hand,  the  uniformity 
which  so  largely  pervades  civilization  may  be  ascribed,  in 
great  measure,  to  the  uniform  action  of  uniform  causes; 
while  on  the  other  hand  its  various  grades  may  be  regarded 
as  stages  of  development  or  evolution,  each  the  outcome  of 
previous  history,  and  about  to  do  its  proper  part  in  shaping 
the  history  of  the  future.  To  the  investigation  of  these  two 
great  principles  in  several  departments  of  ethnography,  with 
especial  consideration  of  the  civilization  of  the  lower  tribes 
as  related  to  the  civilization  of  the  higher  nations  the  pre- 
sent volumes  are  devoted. 

VOL.    I.  ■ 


Mf  SCIENCE  OP  cuwraE. 

then-  special  fields  of  work  fit      '.    *''  '"*'''"  ""^  "itl'oat 
"».i-s.  the  definite  I™™  '    !?'  '  °''"""^'  *''^  ««'>'  " 
*'"'h  every  fact  dependsort.    /r^'  ""<■  ^ff^et  througl, 
-•^  upon  what  is  l^tZ^'X  \"""  "^^"^  ■'-  -^ 

vosmos.  They  affirm,  with  Arlc  ..  f  *''*  nniversal 
full  of  ^coherent  episodeliL  t  f''  *■""  "«""•«  «  not 
w.th  Leibnit.  in  4,,^^  ^  "^    "  .".-"i  «™sed,.     They  agree 

^I'-nothing  happr  s'rrrv^'"^  ^*^. 

are  these  leading  ideas  L^lT'"""''™^  ^"^o^^an 
-■ne  to  tallc  of  iheZeZ^T^''''^'''-  «"'  -"en  Tj 
"-"on,  of  th„  ,,^  and  Ln™  ''1  "'■  ''"■"'"'  f'^-^'"g  and 
<-"""ge  appears  in  tbe    'ZTj',^""^'"'''   '"^  -t,  a 

""-'.v  of  l„,n,an  life  ^  »  iS  1,      ?  """'P'  '^e  general 
ZIt  f°"''  *"  "  '»'•««  -»'e  t      pt:,:'"-'  -'--,  and  to 

m-Ms  there  seems  something  Jfl  .       "™^  '<""«»*«'» 
J»    lieviewthat  the  historv  of  P'"™' """i  "-epofeive 

of  the  history  of  nature  tCfot  T"'"'"'  '^  ?«■•»  «"<!  P«   II 

"■«hofp,:„r -„^:--  -'-^3  and!::::] 

7«pt  a  science  of  histot  f  7  """"^  "'"^  "ould  wilti^l 
;"'»tia]  definiteneas  TXint. ''''""  "«■»  -«  "ut 
"nreasonably  reject  the'Ss  l"  T"™"^'  '""-'«' not 

-- -e  the  habit  Of-::-::— -^^^^^^^ 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


3 


excellent  service  against  the  invasions  of  speculative  dog- 
matism, that  we  may  sometimes  even  wish  it  were  stronger 
than  it  is.  But  other  obstacles  to  the  investigation  of  laws 
of  liuraan  nature  arise  from  considerations  of  metaph3'sics 
and  theology.  The  popular  notion  of  free  huuiau  will  in- 
volves not  only  freedom  to  act  in  accordance  with  motive, 
but  also  a  power  of  breaking  loose  from  continuit)*  and 
acting  without  cause, — a  combination  which  may  be  roughly 
illustrated  by  the  simile  of  a  balance  sometimes  acting  in 
the  usual  way,  but  also  possessed  of  the  faculty  of  turning 
by  itself  without  or  against  its  weights.  This  view  of  an 
anomalous  action  of  the  will,  which  it  need  hardly  be  said  is 
incompatible  with  scientific  argument,  subsists  as  an  opinion 
patent  or  latent  in  men's  minds,  and  strongly  aiFectiiig  their 
theoretic  views  of  history,  though  it  is  not,  as  a  rule, 
brought  prominently  forward  in  systematic  reasoning. 
Indeed  the  definition  of  human  will,  as  strictly  according 
with  motive,  is  the  only  possible  scientific  basis  in  such  en- 
quiries. Happily,  it  is  not  needful  to  add  here  yet  another 
to  the  list  of  dissertations  on  supernatural  intervention  and 
natural  causation,  on  liberty',  predestination,  and  accounta- 
bility. We  may  hasten  to  escape  from  the  regions  of  trans- 
cendental philosophy  and  theology,  to  start  on  a  more  hope- 
ful journey  over  more  practicable  ground.  None  will  deny 
that,  as  each  man  knows  by  the  evidence  of  his  own  con- 
sciousness, definite  and  natural  cause  does,  to  a  great 
extent,  determine  human  action.  Then,  keeping  aside 
from  considerations  of  extra-natural  interference  and  cause- 
less spontaneity,  let  us  take  this  admitted  existence  of 
natural  cause  and  efiect  as  our  standing-ground,  and  travel 
on  it  so  far  as  it  will  bear  us.  It  is  on  this  same  basis  that 
physical  science  pursues,  with  ever-increasing  success, 
its  quest  of  laws  of  nature.  Nor  need  this  restriction 
hamper  the  scientific  study  of  human  life,  in  which  the 
real  difficulties  are  the  practical  ones  of  enormous  com- 
plexity of  evidence,  and  imperfection  of  methods  of 
observation. 

b8 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


r 


Now  it  appears  that  this  view  of  human  will  and  conduct,, 
as  subject  to  definite  law,  is  indeed  recognized  and  acted 
upon  by  the  very  people  who  oppose  it  when  stated  in 
the  abstract  as  a  general  principle,  and  who  then  complain 
that  it  annihilates  man's  free  will,  destroys  his  sense  of  per- 
sonal responsibility,  and  degrades  him  to  a  soulless  machine. 
He  who  will  say  these  things  will  nevertheless  pass  much  of 
his  own  life  in  studying  the  motives  which  lead  to  human 
action,  seeking  to  attain  his  wishes  through  them,  framing 
in  his  mind  theories  of  personal  character,  reckoning  what 
are  likely  to  be  the  effects  of  new  combinations,  and  giving 
to  his  reasoning  the  cro^vning  character  of  true  scientific  en- 
quiry, by  taking  it  for  granted  that  in  so  far  as  his  calcula- 
tion turns  out  wro^ig,  either  his  evidence  must  have  been 
false  or  incomplete,  or  his  judgment  upon  it  unsound. 
Such  a  one  will  sum  up  the  experience  of  years  spent  in 
complex  relations  with  society,  by  declaring  his  persuasion 
that  there  is  a  reason  for  everything  in  life,  and  that  where 
events  look  unaccouutnble,  the  rule  is  to  wait  and  watch  in 
hope  that  the  key  to  the  problem  may  some  day  be  found. 
This  man's  observation  niaj'  have  been  as  narrow  as  his  in- 
ferences are  crude  and  prejudiced,  but  nevertheless  he  has 
been  an  inductive  philosopher  "  more  than  forty  years  Avith- 
out  knowing  it."  He  has  practically  acknowledged  definite 
laws  of  human  thought  and  action,  and  has  simply  thrown 
out  of  account  in  his  own  studies  of  life  the  whole  fabric  of 
motiveless  will  and  uncaused  spontaneity.  It  is  assumed 
here  that  they  should  be  just  so  thrown  out  of  account  in 
wider  studies,  and  that  the  true  philosophy  of  history  lies 
in  extending  and  improving  the  methods  of  the  plain  people 
who  form  their  judgments  upon  facts,  and  check  them 
upon  new  facts.  Whether  the  doctrine  be  wholly  or  but 
partly  true,  it  accepts  the  very  condition  under  which  we 
search  for  new  knowledge  in  the  lessons  of  experience, 
and  in  a  word  the  whole  course  of  our  rational  life  is  based 
upon  it. 

*'  One  event  is  ahvavs  the  son  of  another,  and  we  must 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


5 


never 


forget 


the  parentage,"  w  "s  a  remark  made  by  a 
Bechuana  chief  to  Casalis  the  xifrican  missionary.  Thus 
at  all  times  historians,  so  far  as  they  have  aimed  at  being 
more  than  mere  chroniclers,  have  done  their  best  to  show 
not  merely  succession,  but  connexion,  among  the  events  upon 
their  record.  Moreover,  they  have  striven  to  elicit  general 
principles  of  human  action,  and  by  these  to  explain  par- 
ticular events,  stating  expressly  or  taking  tacitly  for  granted 
the  existence  of  a  philosophy  of  history.  Should  any  one 
deny  the  possibility  of  thus  establishing  historical  laws, 
the  answer  is  ready  with  which  Boswell  in  such  a  case 
turned  on  Johnson :  *'  Then,  sir,  you  would  reduce  all 
history  to  no  better  than  an  almanack."  That  nevertheless 
the  labours  of  so  many  eminent  thinkers  should  have  as  yet 
brought  history  only  to  the  threshold  of  science,  need  cause 
no  wonder  to  those  who  consider  the  bewildering  complexity 
of  the  problems  which  come  before  the  general  historian. 
The  evidence  from  which  he  is  to  draw  his  conclusions  is  at 
once  so  multifarious  and  so  doubtful,  that  a  full  and  distinct 
view  of  its  bearing  on  a  particular  question  is  hardly  to  be 
attained,  and  thus  the  temptation  becomes  all  but  irre- 
sistible to  garble  it  in  support  of  some  rough  and  ready 
theoiy  of  the  course  of  events.  The  philosoph}'  of  history 
at  large,  explaining  the  past  and  predicting  the  future  phe- 
nomena of  man's  life  in  the  world  by  reference  to  general 
laws,  is  in  fact  a  subject  with  which,  in  the  present  state  of 
knowledge,  even  genius  aided  by  wide  research  seems  but 
hardly  able  to  cope.  Yet  there  are  departments  of  it  which, 
though  difficult  enough,  seem  comparatively  accessible.  If 
the  field  of  inquiry  be  narrowed  from  History  as  a  whole 
to  that  branch  of  it  which  is  here  called  Culture,  tlie 
history,  not  of  tribes  or  nations,  but  of  the  condition  of 
knowledge,  religion,  art,  custom,  and  the  like  among  them, 
the  task  of  investigation  proves  to  lie  within  far  more 
moderate  compass.  We  suffer  still  from  the  same  kind  of 
difficulties  which  beset  the  wider  argument,  but  they  are 
much  diminished.     The  evidence  is   no   longer  so  wildly 


II ' 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


heterogeneous,  but  may  be  more  simply  classified  and  com- 
pared, while  the  power  of  getting  rid  of  extraneous  matter, 
and  treating  each  issue  on  its  own  proper  set  of  facts, 
makes  close  reasoning  on  the  whole  more  available  than  in 
general  history.  This  may  appear  from  a  brief  preliminary 
examination  of  the  problem,  how  the  phenomena  of  Culture 
may  be  classified  and  arranged,  stage  by  stage,  in  a  probable 
order  of  evolution. 

Surveyed  in  a  broad  view,  the  character  and  habit  of 
mankind  at  once  display  that  similarity  and  consistency  of 
phenomena  which  led  the  Italian  proverb-maker  to  declare 
that  "all  the  world  is  one  country,"  "tutto  il  mondo  h 
paese."  To  general  likeness  in  human  nature  on  the  one 
hand,  and  to  general  likeness  in  the  circumstances  of  life  on 
the  other,  this  similarity  and  consistency  may  no  doubt  be 
traced,  and  they  may  be  studied  with  especial  fitness  in 
comparing  races  near  the  same  grade  of  civilization.  Little 
respect  need  be  had  in  such  comparisons  for  date  in  history 
or  for  place  on  the  map  ;  the  ancient  Swiss  lake-dweller  may 
be  set  beside  the  mediceval  Aztec,  and  the  Ojibwa  of  North 
America  beside  the  Zulu  of  South  Africa.  As  Dr.  Johnson 
contemptuously  said  when  he  had  read  about  Patagonians 
and  South  Sea  Islanders  in  Hawkesworth's  Voyages,  *  one 
set  of  savages  is  like  another."  How  true  a  generalization 
this  really  is,  any  Ethnological  Museum  may  show.  Examine 
for  instance  the  edged  and  pointed  instruments  in  such  a 
collection ;  the  inventory  includes  hatchet,  adze,  chisel, 
knife,  saw,  scraper,  awl,  needle,  spear  and  arrow-head,  and 
of  these  most  or  all  belong  with  onl}^  differences  of  detail  to 
races  the  most  various.  So  it  is  with  savage  occupations ; 
the  wood-chopping,  fishing  with  net  and  line,  shooting  and 
spearing  game,  fire-making,  cooking,  twisting  cord  and 
plaiting  baskets,  repeat  themselves  with  wonderful  uni- 
formity in  the  museum  shelves  which  illustrate  the  life  of 
the  lower  races  from  Kamchatka  to  Tierra  del  Fuego,  and 
from  Dahome  to  Hawaii.  Even  when  it  comes  to  comparing 
barbarous  hordes  with  civilized  nations,  the  consideration 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    CULTURE. 


thrusts  itself  upon  our  minds,  how  far  item  after  item  of  the 
life  of  the  lower  races  passes  into  analogous  proceedings  of 
the  higher,  in  forms  not  too  far  changed  to  be  recognized, 
and  sometimes  hardly  changed  at  all.  Look  at  the  modern 
European  peasant  using  his  hatchet  and  his  hoe,  see  his 
food  boiling  or  roasting  over  the  log-fire,  observe  the  exact 
place  which  beer  holds  in  his  calculation  of  happiness,  hear 
his  tale  of  the  ghost  in  the  nearest  haunted  house,  and  of 
the  farmer's  niece  who  was  bewitched  with  knots  in  her 
inside  till  she  fell  into  fits  and  died.  If  we  choose  out  in 
this  way  things  which  have  altered  little  in  a  long  course  of 
centuries,  we  may  draw  a  picture  where  there  shall  be  scarce 
a  hand's  breadth  difference  between  an  English  ploughman 
and  a  negro  of  Central  Africa.  These  pages  will  be  so 
crowded  with  evidence  of  such  correspondence  among  man- 
kind, that  there  is  no  need  to  dwell  upon  its  details  here, 
but  it  may  be  used  at  once  to  override  a  problem  which 
would  complicate  the  argument,  namely,  the  question  of 
race.  For  the  present  purpose  it  appears  both  possible  and 
desirable  to  eliminate  considerations  of  hereditary  varieties 
or  races  of  man,  and  to  treat  mankind  as  homogeneous  in 
nature,  though  placed  in  different  grades  of  civilization. 
The  details  of  the  enquiry  will,  I  think,  prove  that  stages 
of  culture  may  be  compared  without  taking  into  account 
how  far  tribes  who  use  the  same  implement,  follow  the  same 
custom,  or  believe  the  same  myth,  may  differ  in  their 
bodily  configuration  and  the  colour  of  their  skin  and 
hair. 

A  first  step  in  the  study  of  civilization  is  to  dissect  it  into 
details,  and  to  classify  these  in  their  jnoper  groups.  Thus, 
in  examining  weapons,  they  are  to  be  classed  under  spear, 
club,  sling,  bow  and  arrow,  and  so  forth  ;  among  textile  arts 
are  to  be  ranged  matting,  netting,  and  several  grades  of 
making  and  weaving  threads ;  myths  are  divided  under  such 
headings  as  myths  of  sunrise  and  sunset,  eclipse-myths, 
earthquake-myths,  local  myths  which  account  for  the  names 
of  places  by  some  fanciful  tale,  eponymic  myths  which  account 


8 


THE    SCIENX'E    OF    CULTURE. 


for  the  parentage  of  a  tril)e  by  turning  its  name  into  tlie 
name  of  an  imnginary  ancestor  ;  under  rites  and  ceremonies 
occur  such  practices  as  the  various  kinds  of  sacrifice  to  the 
ghosts  of  the  dead  and  to  other  spiritual  beings,  the  turning 
to  the  east  in  worship,  the  purification  of  ceremonial  or 
moral  uncleanness  by  means  of  water  or  fire.  Such  are  a 
few  miscellaneous  examples  from  a  list  of  hundreds,  and 
the  ethnographer's  business  is  to  classify  such  details  with 
a  view  to  making  out  their  distribution  in  geography  and 
history,  and  the  relations  which  exist  among  them.  What 
this  task  is  like,  may  be  almost  perfectly  illustrated  by  com- 
paring these  details  of  culture  with  the  species  of  plants  and 
animals  as  studied  by  the  naturalist.  To  the  ethnographer, 
the  bow  and  arrow  is  a  species,  the  habit  of  flattening 
children's  skulls  is  a  species,  the  practice  of  reckoning 
numbers  by  tens  is  a  species.  The  geographical  distribu- 
tion of  these  things,  and  their  transmission  from  region  to 
region,  have  to  be  studied  as  the  naturalist  studies  the 
geography  of  his  botanical  and  zoological  species.  Just  as 
certain  plants  and  animals  are  peculiar  to  certain  districts, 
so  it  is  with  such  instruments  as  the  Australian  boomerang, 
the  Polynesian  stick-and-groove  for  fire-making,  the  tinj' 
bow  and  arrow  used  as  a  lancet  or  phleme  by  tribes  about 
tlie  Isthmus  of  Panama,  and  in  like  manner  with  many  an 
ai*t,  myth,  or  custom,  found  isolated  in  a  particular  field. 
Just  as  the  catalogue  of  all  the  species  of  plants  and  animals 
of  a  district  represents  its  Flora  and  Fauna,  so  the  list  of 
all  the  items  of  the  general  life  of  a  people  represents  that 
whole  which  we  call  its  culture.  And  just  as  distant  regions 
so  often  produce  vegetables  and  animals  which  are  analogous, 
though  by  no  means  identical,  so  it  is  with  the  details  of  the 
civilization  of  their  inhabitants.  How  good  a  working 
analogy  there  really  is  between  the  diffusion  of  plants  and 
animals  and  the  diffusion  of  civilization,  comes  well  into 
view  when  we  notice  how  far  the  same  causes  have  produced 
both  at  once.  In  district  after  district,  the  same  causes 
which  have  introduced  the  cultivated  plants  and  doniesti- 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


9 


cated  animals  of  civilization,  have  brought  in  with  them  a 
corresponding  art  and  knowledge.  The  course  of  events 
which  carried  horses  and  wheat  to  America  carried  with 
thorn  the  use  of  the  gun  and  the  iron  hatchet,  while  in 
return  the  old  world  received  not  only  maize,  potatoes, 
and  turkej'S,  but  the  habit  of  smoking  and  the  sailor's 
hammock. 

It  is  a  matter  worthy  of  consideration,  that  the  accounts 
of  similar  phenomena  of  culture,  recurring  in  different  parts 
of  the  woi'ld,  actually  supi)ly  incidental  proof  of  their  own 
authenticity.  Some  years  since,  a  question  which  brings 
out  this  point  was  put  to  me  by  a  great  historian — "  How 
can  a  statement  as  to  customs,  myths,  beliefs,  &c.,  of  a 
savage  tribe  be  treated  as  evidence  where  it  depends  on  the 
testinu/ny  of  some  traveller  or  missionary,  who  may  be  a 
superficial  observer,  more  or  less  ignorant  of  the  native 
language,  a  careless  retailer  of  unsifted  talk,  a  man  preju- 
diced or  even  wilfully  deceitful?"  This  question  is,  indeed, 
one  which  every  ethnographer  ought  to  keep  clearly  and 
constantly  before  his  mind.  Of  course  he  is  bound  to  use 
his  best  judgment  as  to  the  trustworthiness  of  all  authors 
he  quotes,  and  if  possible  to  obtain  several  accounts  to 
certify  each  point  in  each  locality.  But  it  is  over  and  above 
these  measures  of  precaution,  that  the  test  of  recurrence 
comes  in.  If  two  independent  visitors  to  different  countries, 
say  a  mediieval  Mohammedan  in  Tartary  and  a  modern 
Englishman  in  Daliome,  or  a  Jesuit  missionary  in  Brazil 
and  a  Wesleyan  in  the  Fiji  Islands,  agree  in  describing  some 
analogous  art  or  rite  or  myth  among  the  people  they  have 
visited,  it  becomes  difficult  or  impossible  to  set  down  such 
correspondence  to  accident  or  wilful  fraud.  A  story  by  a 
bushranger  in  Australia  may,  perhaps,  be  objected  to  as  a 
mistake  or  an  invention,  but  did  a  Methodist  minister  in 
Guinea  conspire  with  him  to  cheat  the  public  by  telling  the 
same  story  there  ?  The  possibility  of  intentional  or  unin- 
tentional mystification  is  often  barred  by  such  a  state  of 
things  as  that  a  similar  statement  is  made  in  two  remote 


/  ' 


10 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTLRE. 


lands,  by  two  witnesses,  of  whom  A  lived  a  century  before 
B,  and  B  appears  never  to  have  heard  of  A.  How  distant 
are  the  countries,  how  wide  apart  the  dates,  how  dill't-rent 
the  creeds  and  characters  of  the  observers,  in  the  catalogue 
of  facts  of  civilization,  needs  no  farther  showing  to  any  one 
who  will  even  glance  at  the  foot-notes  of  the  present  work. 
And  the  more  odd  the  statement,  the  less  likely  that  several 
people  in  several  places  should  have  made  it  wrongly.  This 
being  so,  it  seems  reasonable  to  judge  that  the  statements 
are  in  the  main  truly  given,  and  that  their  close  and  regular 
coincidence  is  due  to  the  croppnig  up  of  similar  facts  in 
various  districts  of  culture.  Now  the  most  important  facts 
of  ethnography  are  vouched  for  in  this  way.  Experience 
leads  the  student  after  a  while  to  expect  and  find  that  the 
phenomena  of  culture,  as  resulting  from  widely-acting  similar 
causes,  should  recur  ngain  and  again  in  the  world.  He  even 
mistrusts  isolated  statements  to  which  he  knows  of  no  parallel 
elsewhere,  and  waits  for  their  genuineness  to  be  shown  by 
corresponding  accounts  from  the  other  side  of  the  earth,  or 
the  other  end  of  history.  So  strong,  indeed,  is  this  means 
of  authentication,  that  the  ethnograi)her  in  his  library  may 
sometimes  presume  to  decide,  not  only  whether  a  particular 
explorer  is  a  shrewd  and  honest  observer,  but  also  whether 
what  he  reports  is  conformable  to  the  general  rules  of  civili- 
zation.    Non  qiiis,  sed  quid. 

To  turn  from  the  distribution  of  culture  in  different 
countries,  to  its  diffusion  within  these  countries.  The 
quality  of  mankind  which  tends  most  to  make  the  syste- 
matic study  of  civilization  possible,  is  that  remarkable  tacit 
consensus  or  agreement  which  so  far  induces  whole  popula- 
tions to  unite  in  the  use  of  the  same  language,  to  follow  the 
same  religion  and  customary  law,  to  settle  down  to  the  same 
general  level  of  art  and  knowledge.  It  is  this  state  of  things 
which  makes  it  so  far  possible  to  ignore  exceptional  facts 
and  to  describe  nations  by  a  sort  of  general  average.  It  is 
this  state  of  things  which  makes  it  so  far  possible  to  represent 
immense  masses  of  details  by  a  few  typical  facts,  while,  these 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


11 


once  settled,  new  cases  recorded  by  new  observers  simply 
fall  irfto  their  places  to  prove  the  soundness  of  the  classifi- 
cation. There  is  found  to  be  such  regularity  in  the  compo- 
sition of  societies  of  men,  that  we  can  drop  individual 
differences  out  of  sight,  and  thus  can  generalize  on  the  arts 
and  opinions  of  whole  nations,  just  as,  when  looking  down 
upon  an  army  from  a  hill,  we  forget  the  individual  soldier, 
whom,  in  fact,  we  can  scarce  distinguish  in  the  mass,  while 
we  see  each  regiment  as  an  organized  body,  spreading  or 
concentrating,  moving  in  advance  or  in  retreat.  In  some 
branches  of  the  study  of  social  laws  it  is  now  possible  to  call 
in  the  aid  of  statistics,  and  to  set  apart  special  actions  of 
large  mixed  communities  of  men  by  means  of  taxgatherers' 
schedules,  or  the  tables  of  the  insurance-office.  Among 
modern  arguments  on  the  laws  of  human  action,  none  have 
had  a  deeper  effect  than  generalizations  such  as  those  of  M. 
Quetelet,  on  the  regularit)',  not  only  of  such  matters  as 
average  stature  and  the  annual  rates  of  birth  and  death,  but 
of  the  recurrence,  year  after  year,  of  such  obscure  and 
seemingly  incalculable  products  of  national  life  as  the 
numbers  of  murders  and  suicides,  and  the  proportion  of  the 
very  weapons  of  crime.  Other  striking  cases  are  the  annual 
regularity  of  persons  killed  accidentally  in  the  London 
streets,  and  of  undirected  letters  dropped  into  post-office 
letter-boxes.  But  in  examining  the  culture  of  the  lower 
races,  far  from  having  at  command  the  measured  arithmetical 
facts  of  modern  statistics,  we  may  have  to  judge  of  the 
condition  of  tribes  from  the  imperfect  accounts  supplied  by 
travellers  or  missionaries,  or  even  to  reason  upon  relics  of 
prehistoric  races  of  whose  very  names  and  languages  we 
are  hopelessly  ignorant.  Now  these  may  seem  at  the  first 
glance  sadly  indefinite  and  unpromising  materials  for  a 
scientific  enquiry.  But  in  fact  they  are  neither  indefinite 
nor  unpromising,  but  give  evidence  that  is  good  and  definite, 
so  far  as  it  goes.  They  are  data  which,  for  the  distinct  way 
in  which  they  severally  denote  the  condition  of  the  tribe 
they  belong   to,  will   actually  bear   comparison  with    the 


12 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


statistician's  returns.  The  fact  is  that  a  stone  arrow-head, 
a  carved  cluh,  an  idol,  a  grave-mound  where  slaves  and 
property  have  been  buried  for  the  use  of  the  dead,  an 
account  of  a  sorcerer's  rites  in  making  rain,  a  table  of 
numerals,  the  conjugation  of  a  verb,  are  things  which  each 
express  the  state  of  a  people  as  to  one  particular  point 
of  culture,  as  truly  as  the  tabulated  numbers  of  deaths 
by  poison,  and  of  chests  of  tea  imported,  express  in  a  diffe- 
rent way  other  partial  results  of  the  general  life  of  a  whole 
community. 

That  a  whole  nation  should  have  a  special  dress,  special 
tools  and  weapons,  special  laws  of  marriage  and  property, 
special  moral  and  religious  doctrines,  is  a  remarkable  fact, 
which  we  notice  so  little  because  we  have  lived  all  our  lives 
in  the  midst  of  it.  It  is  with  such  general  qualities  of 
organized  bodies  of  men  that  ethnograph}'  has  especially  to 
deal.  Yet,  while  generalizing  on  the  culture  of  a  tribe  or 
nation,  and  setting  aside  the  peculiarities  of  the  individuals 
composing  it  as  unimportant  to  tlie  main  result,  we  must 
be  careful  not  to  forget  what  makes  up  this  main  result. 
There  are  people  so  intent  on  the  separate  life  of  indi- 
viduals that  they  cannot  grasp  a  notion  of  the  action  of  a 
community  as  a  whole — such  an  observer,  incapable  of  a 
wide  view  of  society,  is  aptly  described  in  the  saying  that 
he  "  cannot  see  the  forest  for  the  trees."  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  philosoj)her  may  be  so  intent  upon  his  general 
laws  of  society  as  to  neglect  the  individual  actors  of  whom 
that  society  is  made  up,  and  of  him  it  may  be  said  that 
he  cannot  see  the  trees  for  the  forest.  We  know  how  arts, 
customs  and  ideas  are  shaped  among  ourselves  by  the  com- 
bined actions  of  many  individuals,  of  which  actions  both 
motive  and  effect  often  come  quite  distinctly  within  our  view. 
The  history  of  an  invention,  an  opinion,  a  ceremony,  is  a 
history  of  suggestion  and  modification,  encouragement  and 
opposition,  personal  gain  and  party  prejudice,  and  the  indi- 
viduals concerned  act  each  according  to  his  own  motives,  as 
determined   by  his   character   and  circumstances.      Thus 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


13 


Bometimes  we  watch  individij;ils  acting  for  their  own  ends 
with  little  thought  of  tli^ir  effect  on  society  at  large,  and 
sometimes  we  have  to  stuuy  movements  of  national  life  as  a 
whole,  where  the  individuals  co-operating  in  t)j»^m  are 
utterly  beyond  our  observation.  But  seeing  that  collective 
social  action  is  the  mere  resultant  of  many  individual 
actions,  it  is  clear  that  these  two  methods  of  enquiry,  if 
rightly  followed,  must  be  absolutely  consistent. 

In  studying  both  the  recurrence  of  spccia!  habits  or  ideas 
in  several  districts,  and  their  prevalence  within  each  district, 
there  come  before  us  ever-reiterated  proofs  of  regular  cau- 
sation producing  the  phenomena  of  human  life,  and  of  laws 
of  maintenance  and  diffusion  according  to  which  these  phe- 
nomena settle  into  permanent  standard  conditions  of  societ}', 
at  definite  stages  of  culture.  But,  while  giving  full  impor- 
tance to  the  evidence  bearing  on  these  standard  conditions 
of  society,  let  us  be  careful  to  avoid  a  pitfall  which  may 
entrap  the  unwary  student.  Of  course  the  opinions  and 
habits  belonging  in  common  to  masses  of  mankind  are  to  a 
great  extent  the  results  of  sound  judgment  and  practical 
wisdom.  But  to  a  great  extent  it  is  not  so.  That  many 
numerous  societies  of  men  should  have  believed  in  the 
influence  of  the  evil  eye  and  the  existence  of  a  firmament, 
should  have  sacrificed  slaves  and  goods  to  the  ghosts  of  the 
departed,  should  have  handed  down  traditions  of  giants 
slaying  monsters  and  men  turning  into  beasts — all  this  is 
ground  for  holding  that  such  ideas  were  indeed  produced  in 
men's  minds  by  efficient  causes,  but  it  is  not  gi'ound  for 
holding  that  the  rites  in  question  are  profitable,  the  beliei's 
sound,  and  the  history  authentic.  This  may  seem  at  the 
first  glance  a  truism,  but,  in  fact,  it  is  the  denial  of  a  fallacy 
which  deeply  aff'ects  the  minds  of  all  but  a  small  critical 
minority  of  mankind.  Popularly,  what  everybody  says 
must  be  tr^'i,  what  everybody  does  must  be  right — "  Quod 
ubique,  quod  semper,  quod  ab  omnibus  creditum  est,  hoc 
est  vere  proprieque  Catholicum  " — and  so  forth.  There  are 
various  topics,  especially  in  history,  law,  philosophy,  and 


•I',- 


14 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


theology,  where  even  the  educated  people  we  live  among 
can  hardly  be  brought  to  see  that  the  cause  why  men  do 
hold  an  opinion,  or  practise  a  custom,  is  by  no  means 
necessarily  a  reason  why  they  ought  to  do  so.  Now  collec- 
tions of  ethnographic  evidence,  bringing  so  prominently  into 
view  the  agreement  of  immense  multitudes  of  men  as  to 
certain  traditions,  beliefs,  and  usages,  are  peculiarly  liable 
to  be  thus  improperly  used  in  direct  defence  of  these  insti- 
tutions themselves,  even  old  barbaric  nations  being  polled 
to  maintain  tlieir  opinions  against  what  are  called  modern 
ideas.  As  it  has  more  than  once  happened  to  myself  to 
find  my  collections  of  traditions  and  beliefs  thus  set  up  to 
prove  their  own  objective  truth,  without  proper  examination 
of  the  grounds  on  which  they  were  actually  received,  I  take 
this  occasion  of  remarking  that  the  same  line  of  argument 
will  serve  equally  well  to  demonstrate,  by  the  strong  and 
wide  consent  of  nations,  that  the  earth  is  flat,  and  night- 
mare the  visit  of  a  demon. 

It  being  shown  that  the  details  of  Culture  are  capable  of 
being  classified  in  a  great  number  of  ethnographic  groups  of 
arts,  beliefs,  customs,  and  the  rest,  the  consideration  comes 
next  how  far  the  facts  arranged  in  these  groups  are  produced 
by  evolution  from  one  another.  It  need  hardly  be  pointed 
out  that  the  groups  in  question,  though  held  together  each 
by  a  conmion  character,  are  by  no  means  accurately  defined. 
To  take  up  again  the  natural  history  illustration,  it  may  be 
said  that  they  are  species  which  tend  to  run  widely  into 
varieties.  And  when  it  comes  to  the  question  what  relations 
some  of  these  groups  bear  to  others,  it  is  plain  that  the 
student  of  the  habits  of  mankind  has  a  great  advantage  over 
the  student  of  the  species  of  plants  and  animals.  Among 
naturalists  it  is  an  open  question  whether  a  theory  of 
development  from  species  to  species  is  a  record  of  transi- 
tions which  actually  took  place,  or  a  mere  ideal  scheme 
serviceable  in  the  classification  of  species  whose  origin  was 
really  independent.  But  among  ethnographers  there  is  no 
such  question  as  to  the  possibility  of  species  of  implements 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


15 


if 


e 
s 


Of  habits  or  beliefs  being  developed  one  out  of  another,  for 
development  in  culture  is  recognized  by  our  most  fiimiliar 
kn«>wledge.  Mechanical  invention  supplies  apt  examples  of 
the  kind  of  development  which  affects  civilization  at  large. 
In  the  history  of  fire-arms,  the  clumsy  wheel-lock,  in  which 
a  notched  steel  wheel  was  turned  by  a  handle  against  the 
flint  till  a  spark  caught  the  priming,  led  to  the  invention  of 
the  more  serviceable  flint-lock,  of  which  a  few  still  hang  in 
the  kitchens  of  our  farm-houses,  for  the  boys  to  shoot  small 
birds  with  at  Christmas ;  the  flint-lock  in  time  passed  by  an 
obvious  modification  into  the  percussion-lock,  which  is  just 
now  changing  its  old-fashioned  arrangement  to  be  adnpted 
from  muzzle-loading  to  breech-loading.  The  mediieval 
astrolabe  passed  into  the  quadrant,  now  discarded  in  its 
turn  by  the  seaman,  who  uses  the  more  delicate  sextant, 
and  so  it  is  through  the  history  of  one  art  and  instrument 
after  another.  Such  examples  of  progression  are  known  -to 
us  as  direct  history,  but  so  thoroughly  is  this  notion  of 
development  at  home  in  our  minds,  that  by  means  of  it  we 
reconstruct  lost  history  without  scruple,  trusting  to  general 
knowledge  of  the  principles  of  human  thought  and  action 
as  a  guide  in  putting  the  facts  in  their  proper  order. 
Whether  chronicle  speaks  or  is  silent  on  the  point,  no  one 
comparing  a  long-bow  and  a  cross-bow  would  doubt  that 
the  cross-bow  was  a  development  arising  from  the  simpler 
instrument.  So  among  the  savage  fire-drills  for  igniting 
by  friction,  it  seems  clear  on  the  face  of  the  matter  that  the 
drill  worked  by  a  cord  or  bow  is  a  later  improvement  on  the 
clumsier  primitive  instrument  twirled  between  the  hands. 
That  instructive  class  of  specimens  wliich  antiquaries 
sometimes  discover,  bronze  celts  modelled  on  the  heavy 
type  of  the  stone  hatchet,  are  scarcely  explicable  except  as 
first  steps  in  the  transition  from  the  Stone  Age  to  the 
Bronze  Age,  to  be  followed  soon  by  the  next  stage  of 
progress,  in  which  it  is  discovered  that  the  new  material  is 
suited  to  a  handier  and  less  wasteful  pattern.  And  thus, 
in  the  other  branches  of  our  history,  there  will  come  again 


if.  I 
1^ 


16 


THE    SCIKNCE    OF    CULTURE. 


ill 


and  again  into  view  series  of  facts  which  may  be  consis 
tently  arranged  as  having  followed  one  another  in  » 
particular  order  of  development,  but  which  will  hardly  bear 
being  turned  round  and  made  to  follow  in  reversed  order. 
Such  for  instance  are  the  facts  I  have  here  brought  forward 
in  a  chapter  on  the  Art  of  Counting,  which  tend  to  prove 
that  as  to  this  point  of  culture  at  least,  savage  tribes 
reached  their  position  by  learning  and  not  by  unlearning,  by 
elevation  from  a  lower  rather  than  by  degradation  from  a 
higher  state. 

Among  evidence  aiding  us  to  trace  the  course  which  the 
civilization  of  the  world  has  actually  followed,  is  that  great 
class  of  facts  to  denote  which  I  have  found  it  convenient 
to  introduce  the  term  "survivals."  These  are  processes, 
customs,  opinions,  and  so  forth,  which  have  been  carried  on 
by  force  of  habit  into  a  new  state  of  society  different  from 
that  in  which  they  had  their  original  home,  and  they  thus 
remain  as  proofs  and  examples  of  an  older  condition  of  cul- 
ture out  of  which  a  newer  has  been  evolved.  Thus,  I  know 
an  old  Somersetshire  woman  whose  hand-loom  dates  from 
the  time  before  the  introduction  of  the  **  flying  shuttle," 
which  new-fangled  appliance  she  has  never  even  learnt  to 
use,  and  I  have  seen  her  throw  her  shuttle  from  hand  to 
hand  in  true  classic  fashion ;  this  old  woman  is  not  a 
century  behind  her  times,  but  she  is  a  case  of  survival. 
Such  examples  often  lead  us  back  to  the  habits  of  hundreds 
and  even  thousands  of  years  ago.  The  ordeal  of  the  Key 
and  Bible,  still  in  use,  is  a  survival ;  the  Midsummer  bonfire 
is  a  survival ;  the  Breton  peasants*  All  Souls'  supper  for 
the  spirits  of  the  dead  is  a  survival.  The  simple  keeping 
up  of  ancient  habits  is  only  one  part  of  the  transition 
from  old  into  new  and  changing  times.  The  serious 
business  of  ancient  society  may  be  seen  to  sink  into  the 
sport  of  later  generations,  and  its  serious  belief  to  linger 
on  in  nursery  folk-lore,  while  superseded  habits  of  old-world 
life  may  be  modiiied  into  new-world  forms  still  powerful  for 
good  and  evil.     Sometimes  old  thoughts  and  practices  will 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


17 


burst  out  afresh,  to  the  amazement  of  a  world  that  thouj^'ht 
them  long  smce  dead  or  dj'ing ;  here  survival  passes  into 
revival,  as  has  lately  happened  in  so  remarkable  a  way  in 
the  history  of  modern  spiritualism,  a  subject  full  of  in- 
struction from  the  ethnographer's  point  of  view.  The  study 
of  the  principles  of  survival  has,  indeed,  no  small  practical 
importance,  for  most  of  what  we  call  superstition  is  in- 
cluded within  survival,  and  in  this  wa}''  lies  open  to  the  attack 
of  its  deadliest  enemy,  a  reasonable  explanation.  Insigni- 
ficant, moreover,  as  multitudes  of  the  facts  of  survival  are 
in  themselves,  their  study  is  so  effective  for  tracing  the 
course  of  the  historical  development  through  which  alone  it 
is  possible  to  understand  their  meaning,  that  it  becomes 
a  vital  point  of  ethnographic  research  to  gain  the  clearest 
possible  insight  into  their  nature.  This  importance  must 
justify  the  detail  here  devoted  to  an  examination  of  survival, 
on  the  evidence  of  such  games,  popular  sayings,  customs, 
superstitions,  and  the  like,  as  may  serve  well  to  bring  into 
view  the  manner  of  its  operation. 

Progress,  degradation,  survival,  revival,  modification,  are 
all  modes  of  the  connexion  that  binds  together  the  complex 
network  of  civilization.  It  needs  but  a  glance  into  the 
trivial  details  of  our  own  dail)'^  life  to  set  us  thinking  how 
far  we  are  really  its  originators,  and  how  far  but  the 
transmitters  and  modifiers  of  the  results  of  long  past  ages. 
Looking  round  the  rooms  we  live  in,  we  may  try  here  how 
far  he  who  only  knows  his  own  time  can  be  capiible  of 
rightly  comprehending  even  that.  Here  is  the  honeysuckle 
of  Assyria,  there  *he  fleur-de-lis  of  Anjou,  a  cornice  with  ii 
Greek  border  runs  .'ound  the  ceiling,  the  style  of  Louis  XIV. 
and  its  parent  the  Kenaissance  share  the  looking-glass 
between  them.  Ivansl'ormed,  shifted,  or  mutilated,  such 
elements  of  art  still  carry  their  history  phiinly  stamped 
upon  them  •,  and  if  tlie  history  yet  farther  behind  is  less  easy 
to  read,  we  are  not  to  say  that  because  we  cannot  clearly 
discern  it  there  is  therefore  no  history  there.  It  is  tiiiiH 
even    with  the   fashion   of  the    clothes   men   wear.       Ilie 


"Oli.     I. 


18 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


I       ! 


ridiculous  little  tails  of  the  German  postilion's  coat  sliow 
of  themselves  how  thej'  came  to  dwindle  to  such  absurd 
riuliiuents ;  but  the  EngHsh  clergyman's  bands  no  longer 
so  convey  their  history  to  the  eye,  and  look  unaccountable 
enough  till  one  has  seen  the  intermediate  stages  througli 
which  they  came  down  from  the  more  serviceable  wide 
collars,  such  as  Milton  wears  in  his  portrait,  and  which 
gave  their  name  to  the  "  band-box  "  they  used  to  be  kept 
in.  In  fact,  the  books  of  costume,  showing  how  one 
garment  grew  or  shrank  by  gradual  stages  and  passed  into 
another,  illustrate  with  much  force  and  clearness  the  nature 
of  the  change  and  growth,  revival  and  decay,  which  go  on 
from  year  to  j'ear  in  more  important  matters  of  life.  In 
books,  again,  we  see  each  writer  not  for  an^  by  himself,  but 
occupying  his  proper  place  in  history ;  we  look  through 
each  philosopher,  jnathematician,  chemist,  poet,  into  the 
background  of  his  education, — through  Leibnitz  into  Des- 
cartes, through  Dalton  into  Priestley,  through  Milton  into 
Homer.  The  study  of  language  has,  perhaps,  done  more 
than  any  other  in  removing  from  our  view  of  human  thought 
and  action  the  ideji  s  of  chance  and  arbitary  invention,  and 
in  substituting  f(jr  them»  a  theory  of  development  by  the  co- 
operation of  individual  men,  through  processes  ever 
reasonable  and  intelligible  where  the  facts  are  fully  known 
liudimentary  as  the  science  of  culture  still  is,  the  symptoms 
are  becoming  very  strong  that  even  what  seem  its  most 
spontaneous  and  motiveless  phenomena  will,  nevertheless, 
be  shown  to  come  within  the  range  of  distinct  cause  and 
effect  as  certainly  as  the  facts  of  mechanics.  What  would 
be  popularly  thought  more  indefinite  and  uncontrolled  than 
the  products  of  the  imagination  in  myths  and  fables  ?  Yet 
any  systematic  investigation  of  mythology,  on  the  basis  of  a 
wide  collection  of  evidence,  will  show  plainly  enough  in 
such  efforts  of  fancy  at  once  a  development  from  stage  to 
stage,  and  a  production  of  uniformity  of  result  from  uni- 
formity of  cause.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  causeless  spontaneity 
is  seen  to  recede  farther  and  farther  into  shelter  within  the 


THE    SCIENCE    OP    CULTURE, 


19 


dark  precincts  of  ignorance ;  like  chance,  that  still  holds  its 
place  among  the  vulgar  as  a  real  cause  of  events  otherwise 
unaccountable,  while  to  educated  men  it  has  long  con- 
sciously meant  nothing  but  this  ignorance  itself.  It  is 
only  when  men  fail  to  see  the  line  of  connexion  in  events, 
that  they  are  prone  to  fall  upon  the  notions  of  arbitrary 
impulses,  causeless  freaks,  chance  and  nonsense  and 
indefinite  unaccountability.  If  cliildish  games,  purposeless 
customs,  absurd  superstitions  are  set  down  as  spontaneous 
because  no  one  can  say  exactly  how  they  came  to  be,  the 
assertion  may  remind  us  of  the  like  effect  that  the  eccentric 
habits  of  the  wild  rice-plant  had  on  the  philosophy  of  a 
Red  Indian  tribe,  otherwise  disposed  to  see  in  the  harmony 
of  nature  the  effects  of  one  controlling  personal  will.  The 
Great  Spirit,  said  these  Sioux  theologians,  made  all 
things  except  the  wild  rice ;  but  the  wild  rice  came  by 
chance. 

"Man,"  said  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  "ever  connects 
on  from  what  lies  at  hand  (der  Mensch  kniipl't  immer  an 
Vorhandenes  an)."  The  notion  of  the  continuity  of  civili- 
zation contained  in  this  maxim  is  no  barren  philosophic 
principle,  but  is  at  once  made  practical  by  the  consideration 
that  they  who  wish  to  understand  their  own  lives  ought  to 
know  the  stages  through  which  their  opinions  and  habits 
have  become  what  they  are.  Auguste  Comte  scarcely  over- 
stated the  necessity  of  this  study  of  development,  when  he 
declared  at  the  beginning  of  his  *  Positive  Philosophy  '  that 
"  no  conception  can  be  understood  except  through  its 
history,"  and  his  phrase  will  bear  extension  to  culture  at 
large.  To  expect  to  look  modern  life  in  the  face  and  com- 
prehend it  by  mere  inspection,  is  a  philosopliy  whose  weak- 
ness can  easily  be  tested.  Imagine  any  one  explaining  the 
trivial  saying,  "  a  little  bird  told  me,"  without  knowing  of 
the  old  belief  in  the  language  of  birds  and  beasts,  to  which 
Dr.  Dasent,  in  the  introduction  to  the  Norse  Tales,  so 
reasonably  traces  its  origin.  To  ingenious  attempts  at 
explaining  by  the  light  of  reason  things  whicli  want  the 

<]  2 


i 


.".•^BBCTg?.' 


20 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


• 


t     1 


!      i- 


light  of  history  to  show  their  meaning,  much  of  the  learned 
nonsense  of  the  world  has  indeed  heen  due.  Sir  II.  S.  Maine, 
in  his  *  Ancient  Law,'  gives  a  perfect  instance.  In  all  the 
literature  which  enshrines  the  pretended  philosophy  of  law, 
he  remarks,  there  is  nothing  more  curious  than  the  pages 
of  elaborate  sophistry  in  which  Blackstone  attempts  to 
explain  and  justify  that  extraordinary  rule  of  English  law, 
only  recently  repealed,  which  prohibited  sons  of  the  same 
father  by  different  mothers  from  succeeding  to  one  another's 
land.  To  Sir  H.  S.  Maine,  knowing  the  facts  of  the  case,  it 
was  easy  to  explain  its  real  origin  from  the  *'  Customs  ot 
Normandy,"  where  according  to  the  system  of  agnation,  or 
kinship  on  the  male  side,  brothers  by  the  same  mother  but 
by  different  fathers  were  of  course  no  relations  at  all  to  one 
another.  But  when  this  rule  "was  transplanted  to  Eng- 
land, the  English  judges,  who  had  no  clue  to  its  principle, 
interpreted  it  as  a  general  prohibition  against  the  suc- 
cession of  the  half-blood,  and  extended  it  to  consanguine- 
ous brothers,  that  is  to  sons  of  the  same  father  by  dili'erent 
wives."  Then,  ages  after,  Blackstone  sought  in  this 
blunder  the  perfection  of  reason,  and  found  it  in  the 
argument  that  kinship  through  both  parents  ouglit  to 
prevail  over  even  a  nearer  degree  of  kinship  through  but 
one  parent.^  Such  are  the  risks  that  philosophers  run  in 
detaching  any  phenomenon  of  civilization  from  its  hold  on 
past  events,  and  treating  it  as  an  isolated  fact,  to  be  simply 
disposed  of  by  a  guess  at  some  plausible  explanation. 

In  carrying  on  the  great  task  of  rational  ethnography, 
the  investigation  of  the  causes  which  have  produced  the 
phenomena  of  culture,  and  the  laws  to  which  they  are 
subordinate,  it  is  drsirable  to  work  out  as  systems) tically  as 
possible  a  scheme  of  evolution  of  this   culture   along  its 


*  Blickstone,  '  Conimontaries. '  "As  every  man's  own  blood  is  com  jiounded 
of  the  bloods  of  bis  rosjiective  ancestors,  he  only  is  properly  of  the  whole  or 
entire  blood  with  another,  who  hath  (so  far  as  the  distance  of  defj^ees  will 
permit),  all  the  same  ingredients  in  the  composition  of  his  blood  that  ths 
oth«r  hath,"  etc. 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTUIIE. 


21 


many  lines.  In  the  following  chnpter,  on  the  Development 
of  Culture,  an  attempt  is  m>ule  to  sketch  a  theoretical 
course  of  civilization  among  mankind,  such  as  appears  on 
the  whole  most  accordant  with  the  evidence.  By  com- 
paring the  various  stages  of  civilization  among  races  known 
to  history,  with  the  aid  of  archaeological  inference  from  the 
remains  of  pre-historic  tribes,  it  seems  possible  to  judge  in 
a  rough  way  of  an  early  general  condition  of  man,  which 
from  our  point  of  view  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  primitive  con- 
dition, whatever  j'et  earlier  state  may  in  reality  have  lain 
behind  it.  This  hypothetical  primitive  condition  corre- 
sponds in  a  considerable  degree  to  that  of  modern  savage 
tribes,  who,  in  spite  of  their  difference  and  distance,  have 
in  common  certain  elements  of  civilization,  which  seem 
remains  of  an  early  state  of  the  human  race  at  large.  If 
this  hypothesis  be  true,  then,  notwithstanding  the  con- 
tinual interference  of  degeneration,  the  main  tendency  of 
culture  from  pvimoeval  up  to  modern  times  has  been  from 
savagery  towards  civilization.  On  the  problem  of  this  rela- 
tion of  savage  to  civilized  life,  almost  every  one  of  the 
thousands  of  facts  discussed  in  the  succeeding  chapters  has 
its  direct  bearing.  Survival  in  Culture,  placing  all  along 
the  course  of  advancing  civilization  way-marks  full  of  mean- 
ing to  those  who  can  decipher  their  signs,  even  now  sets  up 
in  our  midst  primteval  monuments  of  barbaric  thought  and 
life.  Its  investigation  tells  strongly  in  favour  of  the  view 
that  the  European  may  find  among  the  Greenlanders  or 
^laoris  manj^  a  trait  for  reconstructing  the  picture  of  his 
own  primitive  ancestors.  Next  comes  the  problem  of  the 
Origin  of  Language.  Obscure  as  many  parts  of  this 
problem  still  remain,  its  clearer  positions  lie  open  to  the 
investigation  whether  speech  took  its  origin  among  man- 
kind '.n  the  savage  state,  and  the  result  of  the  enquiry  is 
that,  consistently  with  all  known  evidence,  this  may  have 
been  the  case.  From  the  examination  of  the  Art  of  Count- 
ing a  far  more  definite  consequence  is  shown.  It  may  be 
^confidently  asserted,  that  not   onlv  is   this  important  art 


«ia=l*'.  .'..<;  WtrS 


22 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


h  * 


found  in  a  rudimentary  state  among  savage  tribes,  but  tbat 
satisfactory  evidence  proves  numeration  to  have  been  de- 
veloped by  rational  invention  from  this  low  stage  up  to  that 
in  which  we  ourselves  possess  it.  The  examination  of 
INIythology  contained  in  the  first  volume,  is  for  the  most 
part  made  from  a  special  point  of  view,  on  evidence  col- 
lected for  a  special  purpose,  that  of  tracing  the  relation 
between  the  myths  of  savage  tribes  and  their  analogues 
among  more  civilized  nations.  The  issue  of  such  enquiry 
goes  far  to  prove  that  the  earliest  myth-maker  arose  and 
flourished  among  savage  hordes,  setting  on  foot  an  art 
which  his  more  cultured  successors  Avould  carry  on,  till  its 
results  came  to  be  fossilized  in  superstition,  mistaken  for 
history,  shaped  and  draped  in  poetry,  or  cast  aside  as  lying 
folly. 

Nowhere,  perhaps,  are  broad  views  of  historical  develop- 
ment more  needed  than  in  the  study  of  religion.  Notwith- 
standing all  that  has  been  written  to  make  the  world 
acquainted  with  the  lower  theologies,  the  popular  ideas  of 
their  place  in  history  and  their  relation  to  the  faiths  of 
higher  nations  are  still  of  the  mediaeval  type.  It  is  wonder- 
ful to  contrast  some  missionary  journals  with  Max  Miiller's 
Essays,  and  to  set  the  unappreciating  hatred  and  ridicule 
that  is  lavished  by  narrow  hostile  zeal  on  Brahmanism, 
Buddhism,  Zoroastrism,  beside  the  catholic  sympathy  with 
which  deep  and  wide  knowledge  can  survey  those  ancient 
and  noble  phases  of  man's  religious  consciousness ;  nor, 
because  the  religions  of  savage  tribes  may  be  rude  and 
primitive  compared  with  the  great  Asiatic  systems,  do  they 
lie  too  low  for  interest  and  even  for  respect.  The  question 
really  lies  between  understanding  and  misunderstanding 
them.  Few  who  will  give  their  minds  to  master  the 
general  principles  of  savage  religion  will  ever  again  think  it 
ridiculous,  or  the  knowledge  of  it  superfluous  to  the  rest  of 
mankind.  Far  from  its  beliefs  and  practices  being  a 
rubbish-heap  of  miscellaneous  folly,  they  are  consistent 
and  logical  in  so  high  a  degree  as  to  begin,  as  soon  as  even 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


23 


roughly  classified,  to  display  the  principles  of  their  forma- 
tion and  development ;  and  these  principles  prove  to  be 
essentially  rational,  though  working  in  a  mental  condition 
of  intense  and  inveterate  ignorance.  It  is  with  a  sense  of 
attempting  an  investigation  which  bears  very  closely  on  the 
current  theology  of  our  own  day,  that  I  have  set  myself  to 
examine  systematically,  among  the  lower  races,  the  deve- 
lopment of  Animism ;  that  is  to  say,  the  doctrine  of  souls 
and  other  spiritual  beings  in  general.  Mi)re  than  half  of 
the  present  work  is  occupied  with  a  mass  of  evidence  from 
all  regions  of  the  world,  displaying  the  nature  and  meaning 
of  this  great  element  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion,  and 
tracing  its  transmission,  expansion,  restriction,  modifica- 
tion, along  the  course  of  history  into  the  midst  of  our  own 
modern  thought.  Nor  are  the  questions  of  small  practical 
moment  which  have  to  be  raised  in  a  similar  attempt  to 
trace  the  development  of  certain  prominent  Kites  and  Cere- 
monies— customs  so  full  of  instruction  as  to  the  inmost 
powers  of  religion,  whose  outward  expression  and  practical 
result  they  are. 

In  these  investigations,  however,  made  rather  from  an 
ethnographic  than  a  theological  point  of  view,  there  has 
seemed  little  need  of  entering  into  direct  controversial 
argument,  which  indeed  I  have  taken  pains  to  avoid  as  far 
as  possible.  The  connexion  which  runs  through  religion, 
from  its  rudest  forms  up  to  the  status  of  an  enlightened 
Christianity,  may  be  conveniently  treated  of  with  little 
recourse  to  dogmatic  theology.  The  rites  of  sacrifice  and 
purification  may  be  studied  in  their  stages  of  development 
without  entering  into  questions  of  their  authority  and  value, 
nor  does  an  examination  of  the  successive  phases  of  the 
world's  belief  in  a  future  life  demand  a  discussion  of  the 
arguments  adduced  for  or  against  the  doctrine  itself.  The 
ethnographic  results  may  then  be  left  as  materials  for  pro- 
fessed theologians,  and  it  will  not  perhaps  be  long  before 
evidence  so  fraught  with  meaning  shall  take  its  legitimate 
place.     To  fall  back  once  again  on  the  analogy  of  natural 


(' 


2i 


THE    SCIKXCE    OF    CULTURE. 


I  'il 


I! 


i 


historj',  the  lime  may  soon  come  when  it  will  be  thought  n^ 
unreasonable  for  a  scientific  student  of  theology  not  to  have 
a  competent  acquaintance  with  the  principles  of  the  reli- 
gions of  the  lower  races,  as  for  a  physiologist  to  look  with 
the  contempt  of  fifty  years  ago  on  evidence  derived  from 
the  lower  forms  of  life,  deeming  the  structure  of  mere 
invertebrate  creatures  matter  unworthy  of  his  philosophic 
study. 

Not  merely  as  a  matter  of  curious  research,  but  as  an  im- 
portant practical  guide  to  the  understanding  of  the  present 
and  the  shaping  of  the  future,  the  investigation  into  the 
origin  and  early  development  of  civilization  must  be  pushed 
on  zealously.  Every  possible  avenue  of  knowledge  must  be 
explored,  every  door  tried  to  see  if  it  is  open.  No  kind  of 
-evidence  need  be  left  untouched  on  the  score  of  remoteness 
or  complexity,  of  minuteness  or  triviality.  The  tendency 
of  modern  enquiry  is  more  and  more  toward  the  conclusion 
that  if  law  is  anywhere,  it  is  everywhere.  To  despsiir  of 
what  a  conscientious  collection  and  study  of  facts  may  lead 
to,  and  to  declare  anj"^  problem  insoluble  because  difficult 
and  far  off,  is  distinctly  to  be  on  the  wrong  side  in  science  ; 
and  he  who  will  choose  a  hojieless  task  may  set  himself  to 
discover  the  limits  of  discovery.  One  remembers  Comto 
starting  in  his  account  of  astronomj^  with  a  remark  on  the 
necessary  limitation  of  our  knowledge  of  the  stars  :  we  con- 
ceive, he  tells  us,  the  possibiUty  of  determining  their  form, 
distance,  size,  and  movement,  whilst  we  should  never  by 
any  method  be  able  to  study  their  chemical  composition, 
their  mineralogical  structure,  &c.  Had  the  philosopher 
lived  to  see  the  application  of  spectrum  analysis  to  this 
very  problem,  his  proclamation  of  the  dispiriting  doctrine  of 
necessary  ignorance  would  perhaps  have  been  recanted  in 
favour  of  a  more  hopeful  view.  And  it  seems  to  be  with 
the  philosophy  of  remote  human  life  somewhat  as  with  the 
study  of  the  nature  of  the  celestial  bodies.  The  processes 
to  be  made  out  in  the  early  stages  of  our  mental  evolution 
ilie  distant  from  us  in  time  as  the  stars  lie  distant  from  us 


iM 


THE    SCIENCE    OF    CULTURE. 


25 


in  space,  but  the  laws  of  the  universe  are  not  limited  with 
the  direct  observation  of  our  senses.  There  is  vast  mate- 
rial to  be  used  in  our  enquiry ;  many  workers  are  now 
busied  in  bringing  this  material  into  shape,  though  little 
may  have  yet  been  done  in  proportion  to  what  remains  to 
do ;  and  akeady  it  seems  not  too  much  to  say  that  the 
vague  outlines  of  a  philosophy  of  primjBval  history  are 
beginning  to  come  within  our  view. 


I 


CHAPTER  IL 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 

Stages  of  culture,  industrial,  intellectual,  political,  moral — Development  oi 
culture  in  great  measure  corresponds  with  transition  from  savaj^e  throuj^li 
barbaric  to  civilized  life  —  Troj^ression-theory  —  Degeneration-theory  — 
Development-theory  includes  both,  the  one  as  primary,  the  other  as 
secondary — Historical  and  traditional  evidence  not  available  as  to  low 
stages  of  culture  — Historical  evidence  as  to  principles  of  Degeneration — 
Ethnological  evidence  as  to  rise  and  fall  in  culture,  from  comparison  of 
different  levels  of  culture  in  branches  of  the  same  race— Extent  of  his- 
torically recorded  antiquity  of  civilization  —  Prehistoric  Arehaology 
extends  the  antiquity  of  man  in  low  stages  of  civilization — Traces  of 
Stone  Age,  corroborated  by  megalithic  structures,  lake  dwellings,  shell- 
heajjs,  burial-places,  &c.,  prove  original  low  culture  throughout  the  world 
— Stages  of  Progressive  Development  in  industrial  arts. 


In  taking  up  the  problem  of  the  development  of  culture 
as  a  branch  of  ethnological  research,  a  first  proceeding  is  to 
obtain  a  means  of  measurement.  Seeking  something  lilve  a 
definite  line  along  which  to  reckon  progression  and  retro- 
gression in  civilization,  we  may  apparently  find  it  best  in 
the  classification  of  real  tribes  and  nations,  past  and  present. 
Civilization  actually  existing  among  mankind  in  different 
grades,  we  are  enabled  to  estimate  and  compare  it  by  positive 
examples.  Tlie  educated  world  of  Europe  and  America 
practically  settles  a  standard  by  simply  placing  its  own 
nations  at  one  end  of  the  social  series  and  savage  tribes  at 
the  other,  arranging  the  rest  of  mankind  between  these  limits 
according  as  they  correspond  more  closely  to  savage  or  to 
cultured  life.  The  principal  criteria  of  classification  are 
the  absence  or  presence,  high  or  low  development,  of  the 
industrial   arts,  especially  metal-working,   manufiutiire    of 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CFLTURE. 


27 


implements  and  vessels,  agriculture,  architecture,  &c.,  the 
extent  of  scientific  knowledge,  tlie  definiteness  of  moral 
principles,  the  condition  of  religious  belief  and  ceremony, 
the  degree  of  social  and  political  organization,  and  so  forth. 
Thus,  on  the  definite  basis  of  compared  facts,  ethnographers 
are  able  to  set  up  at  least  a  rough  scale  of  civilization.  Few 
would  dispute  that  the  following  races  are  arranged  rightly 
in  order  of  culture  : — Australian,  Tahitian,  Aztec,  Chinese, 
Italian.  By  treating  the  development  of  civilization  on  this 
plain  ethnographic  basis,  many  difficulties  may  be  avoided 
which  have  embarrassed  its  discussion.  This  may  be  seen 
by  a  glance  at  the  relation  which  theoretical  principles  of 
civilization  bear  to  the  transitions  to  be  observed  as  matter 
of  fact  between  the  extremes  of  savage  and  cultured  life. 

From  an  ideal  point  of  view,  civilization  may  be  looked 
upon  as  the  general  improvement  of  mankind  by  higher 
organization  of  the  individual  and  of  society,  to  the  end  of 
promoting  at  once  man's  goodness,  power,  and  happiness. 
This  theoretical  civilization  does  in  no  small  measure  cor- 
respond with  actual  civilization,  as  traced  by  comparing 
savagery  with  barbarism,  and  barbarism  with  modern  edu- 
cated life.  So  far  as  we  take  into  account  only  material 
and  intellectual  culture,  this  is  especially  true.  Acquaint- 
ance with  the  physical  laws  of  the  world,  and  the  accom- 
panying power  of  adapting  nature  to  man's  own  ends,  are, 
on  the  whole,  lowest  among  savages,  mean  among  barba- 
rians, and  highest  among  modern  educated  nations.  Thus 
a  transition  from  the  savage  state  to  our  own  would  be, 
practically,  that  very  progress  of  art  and  knowledge  which 
is  one  main  element  in  the  development  of  culture. 

But  even  those  students  who  hold  most  strongly  that  ihe 
general  course  of  civilizatlcn  as  measured  along  the  scale 
of  races  from  savages  to  ourselves,  is  progress  towards  the 
benefit  of  mankind,  must  admit  many  and  manifold  ex- 
ceptions. Industrial  and  intellectual  culture  by  no  means 
advances  uni  F<)rmly  in  all  its  branches,  and  in  fact  excellence 
in  various  of  its  details  is  often  obtained  under  conditions 


28 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CUI-TURE. 


If 


which  keep  back  culture  as  a  whole.  It  is  true  that  thr'se 
exceptions  seldom  swamp  the  general  rule ;  and  the  English- 
man, admitting  that  he  does  not  climb  trees  like  the  wild 
Australian,  nor  track  game  like  the  savage  of  the  Brazilian 
forest,  nor  compete  with  the  ancient  Etruscan  and  the 
modern  Chinese  in  delicacy  of  goldsmith's  work  and  ivory 
carving,  nor  reach  the  classic  Greek  level  of  oratory  and 
sculpture,  may  yet  claim  for  himself  a  general  condition 
above  any  of  these  races.  But  there  actually  have  to  be 
taken  into  account  developments  of  science  and  art  which 
tend  direct!}'  against  culture.  To  have  learnt  to  give  poison 
secretl}'  and  effectually,  to  have  raised  a  corrupt  literature 
to  pestilent  perfection,  to  have  organized  a  successful 
scheme  to  arrest  free  enquiry  and  proscribe  free  expression, 
are  works  of  knowledge  and  skill  whose  progress  toward 
their  goal  has  hardly  conduced  to  the  general  good.  Thus, 
even  in  comparing  mental  and  artistic  culture  among  several 
peoples,  the  balance  of  good  and  ill  is  not  quite  easy  to 
strike. 

If  not  only  knowledge  and  art,  but  at  the  same  time 
moral  and  political  excellence,  be  taken  into  consideration, 
it  becomes  yet  harder  to  reckon  on  an  ideal  scale  the 
advance  or  decline  from  stage  to  stage  of  culture.  In  fact, 
a  combined  intellectual  and  moral  measure  of  human  con- 
dition is  an  instrument  which  no  student  has  as  yet  learnt 
properly  to  handle.  Even  granting  that  intellectual,  moral, 
and  i)olitical  life  may,  on  a  broad  view,  be  seen  to  progress 
togetlier,  it  is  obvious  that  they  are  far  from  advancing  with 
equiil  steps.  It  may  be  taken  as  man's  rule  of  duty  in  the 
world,  that  he  shall  strive  to  know  as  well  as  he  can  find 
out,  and  to  do  as  well  as  he  knows  how.  But  the  parting 
asunder  of  these  two  great  principles,  that  separation  of 
intelligence  from  virtue  which  accounts  for  so  much  of  the 
wrong-doing  of  mankind,  is  continually  seen  to  happen  in 
the  great  movements  of  civilization.  As  one  conspicuous 
instance  of  what  all  history  stands  to  prove,  if  we  study  the 
early  ages  of  Christianit3%  we  may  see  men  with  minds  per  • 


I 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


29 


vaded  by  the  new  religion  of  duty,  holiness,  and  love,  yet 
at  the  same  time  actually  falling  away  in  intellectual  life, 
thus  at  once  vigorously  grasping  one  half  of  civilization, 
and  contemptuously  casting  off  the  other.  Whether  in  higli 
ranges  or  in  low  of  human  life,  it  may  be  seen  that  advance 
of  culture  seldom  results  at  once  in  unmixed  good.  Courage, 
honesty,  generosity,  are  virtues  which  may  suffer,  at  least 
for  a  time,  bj'  the  development  of  a  sense  of  value  of  life 
and  property.  The  savage  who  adopts  something  of  foreign 
civilization  too  often  loses  his  ruder  virtues  without  gainin.;: 
an  equivalent.  The  white  invader  or  colonist,  though  repre- 
senting on  the  whole  a  higher  moral  standard  than  the 
savage  he  improves  or  destroys,  often  represents  his  standard 
very  ill,  and  at  best  can  hardly  claim  to  substitute  a  life 
stronger,  nobler,  and  purer  at  every  point  than  that  which 
he  supersedes.  The  onward  movement  from  barbarism  has 
dropped  behind  it  more  than  one  quality  of  barbiiric  cha- 
racter, which  cultured  modern  men  look  back  on  with  regret, 
and  will  even  strive  to  regain  by  futile  attempts  to  stop  the 
course  of  history,  and  restore  the  past  in  the  midst  of  the 
present.  So  it  is  with  social  institutions.  The  slavery 
recognized  by  savage  and  barbarous  races  is  preferable  in 
kind  to  that  which  existed  for  centuries  in  late  European 
colonies.  The  relation  of  the  sexes  among  man}'  savnge 
tribes  is  more  healthy  than  among  the  richer  classes  of  the 
Mahommedan  world.  As  a  supreme  authority  of  govern- 
ment, the  savage  councils  of  chiefs  and  elders  compare 
fiivourably  with  the  unbridled  despotism  under  which  so 
many  cultured  races  have  groaned.  The  Creek  Indians, 
asked  concerning  their  religion,  replied  that  where  agree- 
ment was  not  to  be  had,  it  was  best  to  "let  every  man 
paddle  his  canoe  his  own  way: "  and  after  long  ages  of  theo- 
logical strife  and  persecution,  the  modern  world  seems 
coming  to  think  these  savages  not  far  wrong. 

Among  accounts  of  savage  life,  it  is  not,  indeed,  uncom- 
mon to  find  details  of  admirable  moral  and  social  excellence. 
To  take  one  prominent  instance,  Lieut.  Bruijn  Kops  and 


I '. 


fl 


30 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTUKE. 


V:  '' 


M 


Mr.  Wallace  have  described,  among  the  rude  Papuans  of 
the  Eastern  Archipelago,  a  habitual  truthfulness,  rightful- 
ness, and  kindliness  which  it  would  be  hard  to  match  in  the 
general  moral  life  of  Persia  or  India,  to  say  nothmg  of 
many  a  civilized  European  district.*  Such  tribes  may  count 
as  the  *'  blameless  Ethiopians  "  of  the  modern  world,  and 
from  them  an  important  lesson  may  be  learnt.  Ethno- 
graphers who  seek  in  modern  savages  types  of  the  remotely 
luicient  human  race  at  large,  are  bound  by  such  examples 
to  consider  the  rude  life  of  primaeval  man  under  favourable 
conditions  to  have  been,  in  its  measure,  a  good  and  happy 
hfe.  On  the  other  hand,  the  pictures  drawn  by  some 
travellers  of  savagery  as  a  kind  of  paradisaical  state  may  be 
taken  too  exclusively  from  the  bright  side.  It  is  remarked 
as  to  these  ver}*^  Papuans,  that  Europeans  whose  intercourse 
with  them  has  been  hostile  become  so  impressed  with  the 
wild-beast-like  cunning  of  their  attacks,  as  hardly  to  believe 
in  their  having  feelings  in  common  with  civilized  men.  Our 
Polar  explorers  may  well  speak  in  kindly  terms  of  the 
industry,  the  honest}',  the  cheerful  considerate  politeness 
of  the  Esquimaux ;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  these 
rude  peo^Dle  are  on  their  best  behaviour  with  foreigners,  and 
that  their  character  is  apt  to  be  foul  and  brutal  where  they 
have  nothing  to  expect  or  fear.  The  Caribs  are  described 
as  a  cheerful,  modest,  courteous  race,  and  so  honest  among 
themselves  that  if  they  missed  anything  out  of  a  house  they 
said  quite  naturall}',  "  There  has  been  a  Christian  here." 
Yet  the  malignant  ferocity  with  which  these  estimable  people 
tortured  their  prisoners  of  war  with  knife  and  fire-brand 
and  red  pepper,  and  then  cooked  and  ate  them  in  solemn 
debauch,  gave  fair  reason  for  the  name  of  Carib  (Cannibal) 
to  become  the  generic  name  of  man-eaters  in  European 
languages.*^  So  when  we  read  descriptions  of  the  hospitality, 
the  gentleness,  the  bravery,  the  deep  religious  feeling  of  the 


I 


*  G.  W.  Earl,  Tupuans,'  p.  79;  A.  11.  Wnllace,  'Eastern  Archipelago.' 

•  Rochefort,  'lies  Antilles,'  pp.  400-480. 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURK 


31 


North  American  Indians,  we  admit  their  claims  to  oui 
sincere  admiration ;  but  we  must  not  forget  that  tliey  were 
hospitable  literally  to  a  fault,  that  their  gentleness  would 
pass  with  a  flash  of  anger  into  frenzy,  that  their  bravery 
was  stained  with  cruel  and  treacherous  malignity,  that  their 
religion  expressed  itself  in  absurd  belief  and  useless  cere- 
mony. The  ideal  savage  of  the  18th  century  might  be  held 
up  as  a  living  reproof  to  vicious  and  frivolous  London  ;  but 
in  sober  fact,  a  Londoner  who  should  attempt  to  lead  the 
atrocious  life  which  the  real  savage  may  lead  with  impunity 
and  even  respect,  would  be  a  criminal  only  allowed  to  follow 
his  savage  models  during  his  short  intervals  out  of  gaol. 
Savage  moral  standards  are  real  enough,  but  the}'  are  far 
looser  and  weaker  than  ours.  We  may,  I  think,  apply  the 
often-repeated  comparison  of  savages  to  children  as  i'airly 
to  their  moral  as  to  their  intellectual  condition.  The  better 
savage  social  life  seems  in  but  unstable  equilibrium,  liable 
to  be  easil}'  upset  by  a  touch  of  distress,  temjitation,  or 
violence,  and  then  it  becomes  the  worse  savage  life,  which 
we  know  by  so  many  dismal  and  hideous  examples.  Alto- 
gether, it  may  be  admitted  that  some  rude  tribes  lead  a  life 
to  be  envied  by  some  barbarous  races,  and  even  by  the 
outcasts  of  higher  nations.  But  that  any  known  savage 
tribe  would  not  be  improved  by  judicious  civilization,  is  a 
proposition  which  no  moralist  would  dare  to  make  ;  while 
the  general  tenour  of  the  evidence  goes  far  to  justify  the 
view  that  on  the  whole  the  civilized  man  is  not  only  wiser 
and  more  capable  than  the  savage,  but  also  better  and 
hajipier,  and  that  the  barbarian  stands  between. 

It  might,  perhaps,  seem  practicable  to  compare  the  whole 
average  of  the  civilization  of  two  peoples,  or  of  the  same 
people  in  different  ages,  by  reckoning  each,  item  by  item, 
to  a  sort  of  sum-total,  and  striking  a  balance  between  them, 
much  as  an  appraiser  compares  the  value  of  two  stocks  of 
merchandise,  diller  as  they  may  both  in  quantity  and 
quality.  But  the  few  remarks  here  made  will  have  shown 
how  loose  must  be  the  working-out  of  thetie  rough-and-readv 


32 


THE  devei,op.mi:nt  of  culture. 


4 


estimates  of  culture.  In  fact,  much  of  the  labnur  spent  ii* 
investigating  the  progress  and  decline  of  civilization  ha- 
been  mis-spent,  in  premature  attempts  to  treat  that  as  a 
whole  which  is  as  j^et  only  susceptible  of  divided  stud}'. 
The  present  comparatively  narrow  argument  on  the  devel(»p- 
ment  of  culture  at  any  rate  avoids  this  greatest  perplexity. 
It  takes  cognizance  principall}''  of  knowledge,  art,  and 
custom,  and  indeed  only  very  partial  cognizance  within 
this  field,  the  vast  range  of  physical,  political,  social,  and 
ethical  considerations  being  left  all  but  untouched.  Its 
standard  of  reckoning  progress  and  decline  is  not  that  of 
ideal  good  and  evil,  but  of  movement  along  a  measured  line 
from  grade  to  grade  of  actual  savagery,  barbarism,  and 
civilization.  The  thesis  which  I  venture  to  sustain,  within 
limits,  is  simply  this,  that  the  savage  state  in  some  measure 
represents  an  early  condition  of  mankind,  out  of  which  the 
higher  culture  has  gradually  been  developed  or  evolved,  by 
processes  still  in  regular  operation  as  of  old,  the  result 
showing  that,  on  the  whole,  progress  has  far  prevailed  over 
relapse. 

On  this  proposition,  the  main  tendency'  of  human  society 
during  its  long  term  of  existence  has  been  to  pass  from  a 
savage  to  a  civilized  state.  Now  all  nmst  admit  a  great 
part  of  this  assertion  to  be  not  only  truth,  but  truism. 
Ileferred  to  direct  history,  a  great  section  of  it  proves  to 
belong  not  to  the  domain  of  specidation,  but  to  that  of  positive 
knowledge.  It  is  mere  matter  of  chronicle  that  modern 
civilization  is  a  development  of  mediaeval  civilization,  which 
again  is  a  development  from  civilization  of  the  order  repre- 
sented in  Greece,  Assyria,  or  Egypt.  Thus  the  higher 
culture  being  clearly  traced  back  to  what  may  be  called  the 
middle  culture,  the  question  which  remains  is,  whether  this 
middle  culture  may  be  traced  back  to  the  lower  culture, 
that  is,  to  savagery.  To  affirm  this,  is  merely  to  assert 
that  the  same  kind  of  development  in  culture  which  has 
gone  on  inside  our  range  of  knowledge  has  also  gone  on 
outside  it,  its  course  of  proceeding  being  unafi'ected  by  our 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


33 


having  or  not  having  reporters  present.  If  any  one  holds 
that  human  thought  and  action  were  worked  out  in  primfeval 
times  according  to  laws  essentially  other  than  those  of  tlie 
modern  world,  it  is  for  him  to  prove  by  valid  evideu'  e 
this  anomalous  state  of  things,  otherwise  the  doctriue  of 
permanent  principle  will  hold  good,  as  in  astronomy  or 
geology.  That  the  tendency  of  culture  has  been  similar 
throughout  the  existence  of  human  societ}',  and  that  we 
may  fairly  judge  from  its  known  historic  course  what  its  pre- 
historic course  may  have  been,  is  a  theory  clearly  entilLnl 
to  precedence  as  a  fundamental  principle  of  ethnographic 
research. 

Gibbon,  in  his  'Roman  Empire,'  expresses  in  a  few 
vigorous  sentences  his  theory  of  the  course  of  culture,  as 
from  savagery'  ward.  Judged  by  the  knowledge  of  nearly 
a  century  later,  his  remarks  cannot,  indeed,  pass  unques- 
tioned. Especially  he  seems  to  rel}'  with  misplaced  con- 
fidence on  ti'aditions  of  archaic  rudeness,  to  exau" aerate  the 
lowness  of  savage  life,  to  underestimate  the  liability  to  decay 
of  the  ruder  arts,  and  in  his  view  of  the  effect  of  high  on 
low  civilization,  to  dwell  too  exclusively  on  the  brighter  side. 
But,  on  the  whole,  the  great  historian's  judgment  seems  so 
substantiaHy  that  of  the  unprejudiced  modern  student  of  the 
progressionist  school,  that  I  gladly  quote  the  passage  here 
at  length,  and  take  it  as  a  text  to  represent  the  development- 
theory  of  culture  : — "  The  discoveries  of  ancient  and  modern 
navigators,  and  the  domestic  history,  or  tradition,  of  the 
most  enlightened  nations,  represent  the  human  savage 
naked  both  in  mind  and  body,  and  destitute  of  laws,  of 
arts,  of  ideas,  and  almost  of  language.  From  this  abject 
condition,  perhaps  the  primitive  and  universal  state  of  man, 
he  has  gradually  arisen  to  command  the  animals,  to  fertilise 
the  earth,  to  traverse  the  ocean,  and  to  measure  the  heavens. 
His  progress  in  the  improvement  and  exercise  of  his  mental 
and  corporeal  faculties  has  been  irregular  and  various ; 
infinitely  slow  in  the  beginning,  and  increasing  by  degrees 
with  redoubled  velocity  :  ages  of  laborious  ascent  have  been 

VUU    I.  D 


34 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


9) 
it/ 


Ifl 


I 


! 
!1  IJIi 


I; 
i  1'  . 


followed  by  a  moiiient  of  rapid  downfall ;  and  the  several 
climates  of  the  globe  have  felt  the  vicissitudes  of  light  and 
dnrkness.  Yet  the  experience  of  four  thousand  3'ears 
should  eiilnrge  our  hopes,  and  diminish  our  apprehensions : 
we  cannot  determine  to  what  height  the  human  species  may 
aspire  in  their  advances  towards  perfection ;  but  it  may 
safely  be  presumed  that  no  people,  unless  the;  face  of  nature 
is  changed,  will  relapse  into  their  original  barbarism.  The 
improvements  of  society  may  be  viewed  under  a  threefold 
aspect.  1.  The  poet  or  philosopher  illustrates  his  age  and 
country  by  the  efforts  of  a  single  mind  ;  but  these  superior 
powers  of  reason  or  fancy  are  rare  and  spontaneous  produc- 
tions ;  and  the  genius  of  Homer,  or  Cicero,  or  Newton, 
would  excite  less  admiration,  if  they  could  be  created  by  the 
will  of  a  prince,  or  the  lessons  of  a  preceptor.  2.  The 
benefits  of  law  and  policy,  of  trade  and  manufiictures,  of 
arts  and  sciences,  are  more  solid  and  permanent ;  and  many 
individuals  may  be  qualified,  by  education  and  discipline,  to 
promote,  in  their  respective  stations,  the  interest  of  the 
community.  But  this  general  order  is  the  effect  of  skill 
and  labour  ;  and  the  complex  machinery  may  be  decayed  by 
time,  or  injured  by  violence.  3.  Fortunately  for  mankind, 
the  more  useful,  or,  at  least,  more  necessary  arts,  can  be 
performed  without  superior  talents,  or  national  subordina- 
tion; without  the  powers  of  one,  or  the  union  of  mayiy. 
Each  village,  each  family,  each  individual,  must  always 
possess  both  ability  and  inclination  to  perpetuate  the  use 
of  fire  and  of  metals ;  the  propagation  and  service  of 
domestic  animals  ;  the  methods  of  hunting  and  fishing ;  the 
rudiments  of  navigation  ;  the  imperfect  cultivation  of  corn, 
or  other  nutritive  grain ;  and  the  simple  practice  of  the 
mechanic  trades.  Private  genius  and  public  industry  may 
be  extirpated  ;  but  these  hardy  plants  survive  the  temi)est, 
and  strike  an  everlasting  root  into  the  most  unfavourable  soil. 
The  splendid  days  of  Augustus  and  Trajan  were  eclipsed  by 
a  cloud  of  ignorance  ;  and  the  barbarians  subverted  the  laws 
and  palaces  of  Rome.     But  the  scythe,  the  invention  or 


I* 

f 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


35 


ra 
ie 

le 


emblem  of  Saturn,  still  continued  annually  to  mow  the 
harvests  of  Italy;  and  the  human  feasts  of  the  Laestrigons 
have  never  been  renewed  on  the  coast  of  Campania.  Since 
the  first  discovery  of  the  arts,  war,  commerce,  and  religious 
zeal,  have  diffused,  among  the  savages  of  the  Old  and  New 
World,  these  inestimable  gifts  ;  they  have  been  successively 
propagated ;  they  can  never  be  lost.  We  may  therefore 
acquiesce  in  the  pleasing  conclusion,  that  every  age  of  the 
world  has  increased,  and  still  increases,  the  real  wealth. 
the  happiness,  the  knowledge,  and  perhaps  the  virtue,  of 
the  human  race."^ 

This  progression-theory  of  civilization  may  be  contrasted 
with  its  rival,  the  degeneration-theory,  in  the  dashing 
invective  of  Count  Joseph  de  Maistre,  written  toward  the 
beginning  of  this  century.  "  Nous  partons  toujours,"  he 
says,  "  de  I'hypothese  banale  que  I'homme  s'est  eleve  gradu- 
ellement  de  la  barbaric  a  la  science  et  a  la  civilisation. 
C'est  le  reve  favori,  c'est  I'erreur-mere,  et  comme  dit  I'ecole, 
le  proto-pseudes  de  notre  siecle.  Mais  si  les  philosophes 
de  ce  malheureux  siecle,  avec  I'horrible  perversite  que  nous 
leur  avons  connue,  et  qui  s'obstinent  encore  malgre  les 
avertissements  qu'ils  ont  regus,  avaient  possede  de  plus 
quelques-unes  de  ces  connaissances  qui  ont  du  necessaire- 
ment  appartenir  aux  premiers  hommes,  &c."^  The 
degeneration-theory,  which  this  eloquent  antagonist  of 
"modern  ideas"  indeed  states  in  an  extreme  shape,  has 
received  the  sanction  of  men  of  great  learning  and  ability. 
It  has  practically  resolved  itself  into  two  assumptions,  first, 
that  the  history  of  culture  began  with  the  appearance  on 
earth  of  a  semi-civilized  race  of  men,  and  second,  that  from 
this  stage  culture  has  proceeded  in  two  ways,  backward  to 
produce  savages,  and  forward  to  produce  civilized  men. 
The  idea  of  the  original  condition  of  man  being  one  of 
more  or  less  high  culture,  must  have  a  certain  prominence 


i 


'  Gibbon,  '  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire,'  ch.  xxxviii. 
'  Do  Maist:-©,  'Soirees  de  St.  PtStersbourg,'  vol.  ii.  p.  150. 

1)  2 


36 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


|i 


II 


given  to  it  on  account  of  its  considerable  hold  on  public 
oi)inion.  As  to  definite  evidence,  however,  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  any  ethnological  basis  whatever.  Indeed,  I 
scarce!}'  think  that  a  stronger  counter-persuasion  could  be 
used  on  an  intelligent  student  inclined  to  the  ordinary 
dt  generation-theory  than  to  induce  him  to  examine  criti- 
cally and  imi^artially  the  arguments  of  the  advocates  on  his 
own  side.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  the 
grounds  on  which  this  theory  has  been  held  have  generally 
been  rather  theological  than  ethnological.  The  strength 
cf  the  position  it  has  thus  occupied  may  be  well  instanced 
from  the  theories  adopted  by  two  eminent  French  writers 
of  the  last  century,  which  in  a  remarkable  way  piece 
together  a  belief  in  degeneration  and  an  argument  for  pro- 
gression. De  Brosses,  whose  whole  intellectual  nature 
turned  to  the  progression-theory,  argued  that  by  studying 
what  actually  now  happens  "  we  may  trace  men  upward  from 
the  savage  state  to  which  the  flood  and  dispersion  had 
reduced  them."  ^  And  Goguet,  holding  that  the  pre- 
existing arts  perished  at  the  deluge,  was  thus  left  free  to 
work  out  on  the  most  thorough-going  progressionist 
principles  his  theories  of  the  invention  of  fire,  cooking, 
agriculture,  law,  and  so  forth,  among  tribes  thus  reduced 
to  a  condition  of  low  savagery.^  At  the  present  time  it  is 
not  unusual  for  the  origin  of  civilization  to  be  treated  as 
matter  of  dogmatic  theology.  It  has  happened  to  me  more 
than  once  to  be  assured  from  the  pulpit  that  the  theories  of 
ethnologists  who  consider  man  to  have  risen  from  a  low 
original  condition  are  delusive  fancies,  it  being  revealed 
truth  that  man  was  originall}'^  in  a  high  condition.  Now  as 
a  matter  of  Biblical  criticism  it  must  be  remembered  that  a 
large  proportion  of  modern  theologians  are  far  from  accept- 
ing such  a  dogma.     But  in  investigating  ths  problem  of 


'  De  Brosses,  '  Dieux  Fetiches,' p.  16;  •Formation  des  Langues,' vol.  i 
p.  49 ;  vol.  ii.  p.  32. 
'  Goguet,  'Origine  des  Lois,  des  Arts,'  etc.,  vol.  L  p.  89. 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


37 


)f 


eiirl}'  civilization,  the  claim  to  ground  scientific  opinion  upon 
a  basis  of  revelation  is  in  itself  objectionable.  It  would 
be,  I  think,  inexcusable  if  students  who  have  seen  in 
Astronomy  and  Geology  the  unhappy  results  of  attempting 
to  base  science  on  religion,  should  countenance  a  similar 
attempt  in  Ethnology. 

By  long  experience  of  the  course  of  human  societ}',  the 
principle  of  development  in  culture  has  become  so  in- 
grained in  our  philosophy  that  ethnologists,  of  whatever 
school,  hardly  doubt  but  that,  whether  by  progress  or 
degradation,  savagery  and  civilization  are  connected  as 
lower  and  higher  stages  of  one  formation.  As  such,  then, 
two  principal  theories  claim  to  account  for  their  relation. 
As  to  the  first  hypothesis,  which  takes  savage  life  as  in 
some  sort  representing  an  early  human  state  whence  higher 
states  were,  in  time,  developed,  it  has  to  be  noticed  that 
advocates  of  this  progression-theor}'  are  apt  to  look  back 
toward  yet  lower  original  conditions  of  mankind.  It  has 
been  truly  remarked  that  the  modern  naturalist's  doctrine 
of  progressive  development  has  encouraged  a  train  of 
thought  singularly  accordant  with  the  Epicurean  theory  of 
man's  early  existence  on  earth,  in  a  condition  not  far 
removed  from  that  of  the  lower  animals.  On  such  a  view, 
savage  life  itself  would  be  a  far  advanced  condition.  If  the 
advance  of  culture  be  regarded  as  taking  place  along  one 
general  line,  then  existing  savagery  stands  directl}'  inter- 
mediate between  animal  and  civilized  life  ;  if  along  different 
lines,  then  savagery  and  civilization  may  be  considered  as 
at  least  indirectly  connected  through  their  common  origin. 
The  method  and  evidence  here  employed  are  not,  however, 
suitable  for  the  discussion  of  this  remoter  part  of  the 
problem  of  civilization.  Nor  is  it  necessary  to  enquire  how, 
under  this  or  any  other  theory,  the  savage  state  first  came 
to  be  on  earth.  It  is  enough  that,  by  some  means  or  other, 
it  has  actually  come  into  existence ;  and  so  far  as  it  may 
serve  as  a  guide  in  inferring  an  early  condition  of  the 
human  race  at  large,  so  far  the  argument  takes  the  very 


,>b'«i»<»irA;ji.v*wj»«» 


38 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


rn; 


practicable  shape  of  a  discussion  turning  rather  on  actual 
than  imaginary  states  of  society.  The  second  hypothesis, 
which  regards  higher  cultiire  as  original,  and  the  savage 
condition  as  produced  from  it  by  a  course  of  degeneration, 
at  once  cuts  the  hard  knot  of  the  origin  of  culture.  It 
takes  for  gi-anted  a  supernatural  interference,  as  where 
Archbishop  Whately  simply  refers  to  miraculous  revelation 
that  condition  above  the  level  of  barbarism  which  he  con- 
siders to  have  been  man's  original  state.^  It  may  be  inci- 
dentally remarked,  however,  that  the  doctrine  of  original 
civilization  bestowed  on  man  by  divine  intervention,  by  no 
means  necessarily  involves  the  view  that  this  original  civil- 
ization was  at  a  high  level.  Its  advocates  are  free  to  choose 
their  starting-point  of  culture  above,  at,  or  below  the  savage 
condition,  as  may  on  the  evidence  seem  to  them  most 
reasonable. 

The  two  theories  which  thus  account  for  the  relation  of 
savage  to  cultured  life  may  be  contrasted  according  to  their 
main  character,  as  the  progression-theory  and  the  degrada- 
tion-theory. Yet  of  course  the  progression-theory  recog- 
nizes degradation,  and  the  degradation-theory  recognizes 
progression,  as  powerful  influences  in  the  course  of  culture. 
Under  proper  limitations  the  principles  of  both  theories  are 
conformable  to  historical  knowledge,  which  shows  us,  on 
the  one  hand,  that  the  state  of  the  higher  nations  was 
reached  by  progression  from  a  lower  state,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  that  culture  gained  by  progression  ma}'  be  lost 
by  degradation.  If  in  this  enquiry  we  should  be  obliged  to 
end  in  the  dark,  at  any  rate  we  need  not  begin  there. 
History,  taken  as  our  guide  in  explaining  the  different  stages 
of  civilization,  offers  a  theory  based  on  actual  experience. 
This  is  a  development-theory,  in  which  both  advance  and 
relapse  have  their  acknowledged  places.  But  so  far  as 
history  is  to  be  our  criterion,  progression  is  primary  and 
degradation  secondary;  culture  must  be   gained   before  it 


4 


'  Wliately,  '  Essay  on  the  Origin  of  Civilization,'  in  Miscellaneous  Lectures, 
p+c.     See  also  W.  Cooke  Taylor,  '  Natural  History  of  Society.' 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


39 


Ciin  be  lost.  Moreover,  in  striking  a  balance  between  the 
elTects  of  forward  and  backward  movement  in  civilization,  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  how  powerfully  the  ditlusion  of 
culture  acts  in  preserving  the  results  of  progress  from  the 
attacks  of  degeneration.  A  progressive  movement  in  culture 
spreads,  and  becomes  independent  of  the  fate  of  its  oritii- 
nators.  What  is  produced  in  some  limited  district  is  dif- 
fused over  a  wider  and  wider  area,  where  the  process  of 
effectual  "  stamping  out  "  becomes  more  and  more  dil'licult. 
Thus  it  is  even  possible  for  the  habits  and  inventions  of 
races  long  extinct  to  remain  as  the  common  property'  of 
surviving  nations  ;f  and  the  destructive  actions  which  make 
such  havoc  with  the  civilizations  of  particular  districts  fail 
to  destroy  the  civilization  of  the  world. 

The  enquiry  as  to  the  relation  of  savagery  to  barbarism 
and  semi-civilization  lies  almost  entirely  in  prse-historic  or 
extra -historic  regions.  This  is  of  course  an  unfavourable 
condition,  and  must  be  frankly  accepted.  Direct  history 
hardly  tells  anything  of  the  changes  of  savage  culture, 
except  where  in  contact  with  and  under  the  dominant 
inlluence  of  foreign  civilization,  a  state  of  things  wliich  is 
little  to  our  present  purpose.  Periodical  examinations  of  low 
races  otherwise  left  isolated  to  work  out  their  own  destinies, 
would  be  interesting  evidence  to  the  student  of  civilization 
if  they  could  be  made ;  but  unfc otunately  they  cannot. 
The  lower  races,  wanting  documentary  memorials,  loose  in 
preserving  tradition,  and  ever  ready  to  clothe  myth  in  its 
shape,  can  seldom  be  trusted  in  their  stories  of  long-past 
ages.  History  is  oral  or  written  record  which  can  be 
sptisfactorily  traced  into  contact  with  the  events  it  de- 
scriues  ;  and  perhaps  no  account  of  the  course  of  culture  in 
its  lower  stages  can  satisfy  this  stringent  criterion.  Tradi- 
tions may  be  urged  in  support  eitlier  of  the  progression- 
theory  or  of  the  degradation-theory.  These  traditions  may 
be  partly  true,  and  must  be  pai'tly  untrue ;  but  whatever 
truth  or  untruth  they  may  contam,  there  is  such  difficulty 
in  separating  man's  recollection  oi  what  was  from  liis  specu- 


^1) 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


li 


m 


m 


lation  as  to  what  might  have  hoen,  that  ethu()h)gy  seems  nl 
likely  to  gain  much  h}-  atteiui'ts  to  judge  of  early  stages  of 
civilization  on  a  traditional  basis.  The  problem  is  one 
which  has  occupied  the  philosophic  mind  even  in  savage 
and  barbaric  life,  and  has  been  solved  bj"^  speculations 
asserted  as  facts,  and  by  traditions  which  are,  in  great 
measure,  mere  realized  theories.  The  Chinese  can  show, 
with  all  due  gravity,  the  records  of  their  ancient  dynasties, 
and  tell  us  how  in  old  times  their  ancestors  dwelt  in  caves, 
clothed  themselves  in  leaves,  and  ate  raw  flesh,  till,  under 
such  and  such  rulers,  they  were  taught  to  build  huts, 
prepare  skins  for  garments,  and  make  fire.^  Lucretius  can 
describe  to  us,  in  his  famous  lines,  the  large-boned,  hardy, 
lawless,  primseval  race  of  man,  living  the  roving  life  of  the 
wild  beasts  which  he  overcame  with  stones  and  heavv  clubs, 
(devouring  berries  and  acorns,  ignorant  as  yet  of  fire,  and 
agriculture,  and  the  use  of  skins  for  clothing.  From  this 
state  the  Ei)icurean  poet  traces  up  the  development  of 
culture,  beginning  outside  but  ending  inside  the  range  of 
human  memory.^  To  the  same  class  belong  those  legends 
which,  starting  from  an  ancient  savage  state,  describe  its 
elevation  by  divine  civilizers  :  this,  which  may  be  called  the 
supernatural  progression-theory,  is  exemplified  in  the 
familiar  culture-traditions  of  Peru  and  Italy. 

But  other  minds,  following  a  different  ideal  track  from 
the  present  to  the  past,  have  seen  in  a  far  different  shape 
the  early  stages  of  human  life.  Those  men  whose  eyes  are 
always  turned  to  look  back  on  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients, 
those  who  by  a  common  confusion  of  thought  ascribe  to 
men  of  old  the  wisdom  of  old  men,  those  who  hold  fast  to 
some  once-honoured  scheme  of  life  which  new  schemes  are 
superseding  before  their  eyes,  are  apt  to  carry  back  their 
thought  of  present  degeneration  into  far-gone  ages,  till  they 
reach  a  period  of  primaeval  glory.  The  Parsi  looks  back  to 
the  happy  rule  of  King  Yima,  when  men  and  cattle  were 
immortal,  when  water  and  trees  never  dried  up  and  food 

*  Goguet,  voL  iii.  p.  270.  '  Lucret.  v.  923,  etc. ;  see  Hor.  Sat.  i.  3. 


THL    DEVKLOPMKNT    OF    CULTL'RE. 


41 


was  inexhaustible,  when  there  was  no  cold  nor  heat,  no 
envy  nor  old  age.^  The  Buddhist  looks  back  to  the  age  ot' 
glorious  soaring  beings  who  had  no  sin,  no  sex,  no  want  ol 
food,  till  the  unhai)py  hour  when,  tasting  a  delicious  scum 
that  fonaed  upon  the  surface  of  the  earth,  they  fell  into 
evil,  and  in  time  became  degraded  to  eat  rice,  to  bear 
children,  to  build  houses,  to  divide  property,  and  to 
establish  caste.  In  after  ages,  record  preserves  details  of 
the  continuing  course  of  degeneration.  It  was  King 
Cheti^'a  who  told  the  first  lie,  and  the  citizens  who  heard  of 
it,  not  knowing  what  a  lie  was,  asked  if  it  were  white,  black 
or  blue.  Men's  lives  grew  shorter  and  shorter,  and  it  was 
King  Maha  Sagara  who,  after  a  brief  reign  of  252,000  years, 
made  the  dismal  discovery  of  the  first  grey  liair.^ 

Admitting  the  imperfection  of  the  historical  recoi'd  as 
regards  the  lowest  stages  of  culture,  we  must  bear  in  mind 
that  it  tells  both  ways.  Niebuhi*,  attacking  the  progression- 
ists of  the  18th  century,  remarks  that  they  have  overlooked 
the  fact  "  that  no  single  example  can  be  brought  forward  of 
an  actually  savage  people  having  independently  become 
civilized."^  Whately  api)ropriated  this  remark,  which  indeed 
forms  the  kernel  of  his  well-known  Lecture  on  the  Origin  of 
Civilization:  "Facts  are  stubborn  things,"  he  says,  "and 
that  no  authenticated  instance  can  be  produced  of  savages 
that  ever  did  emerge,  unaided,  from  that  state  is  no  theory, 
but  a  statement,  hitherto  never  disproved,  of  a  matter  of 
/ac'f."  He  uses  this  as  an  argument  in  support  of  his 
general  conclusion,  that  man  could  not  have  risen  indepen- 
dently from  a  savage  to  a  civilized  state,  and  that  savages 
are  degenerate  descendants  of  civilized  men.*  But  he  omits 
to  ask  the  counter-question,  whether  we  find  one  recorded  in- 
stance of  a  civilized  people  falling  independently  into  a  savage 

'  '  Avesta,'  trans.  Spiegel  &  Blecck,  vol.  ii.  p.  60. 
2  Hardy,  '  Manual  of  Budhism,' pp.  64,  128. 

•  Nicbiilir,  'Eoniisclie  Goschiclite,'  part  i.  p.  88:  "Nur  das  haben  sie 
iibersehen,  da&z  kein  einziges  Btys]i.iel  von  einem  wirklich  wilden  Volk  aufzu- 
weisen  i.st,  welchos  frey  zur  Cultur  iibergegangen  ware." 

*  Whately,  '  Essay  on  Origin  of  Civilization.' 


(I»«»J.' 


42 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


I!! 


I  iM 


state  ?  Any  such  record,  direct  and  well  vouched,  would  be  of 
high  interest  to  ethnologists,  though,  of  course,  it  would  not 
contradict  the  development-theory,  for  proving  loss  is  not 
disproving  previous  gain.  But  where  is  such  a  record  to  be 
found  ?  The  defect  of  historical  evidence  as  to  the  transi- 
tion between  savagery  and  higher  culture  is  a  two-sided  fact, 
only  half  taken  into  Archbishop  Whately's  one-sided  argu- 
ment. Fortunately  the  defect  is  by  no  means  fatal. 
Though  history  may  not  account  directly  for  the  existence 
and  explain  the  position  of  savages,  it  at  least  gives  evidence 
which  bears  closely  on  the  matter.  Moreover,  we  are  in 
various  v/ays  enabled  to  study  the  lower  course  of  culture  on 
evidence  which  cannot  have  been  tampered  with  to  support 
a  theory.  Old  traditional  lore,  however  untrustworthy  as 
direct  record  of  events,  contains  most  faithful  incidental 
descriptions  of  manners  and  customs  ;  archaeology  displays 
old  structures  and  buried  reUcs  of  the  remote  past ;  philo- 
logy brings  out  the  undesigned  history  in  language,  which 
generation  after  generation  have  handed  down  without  a 
thought  of  its  having  such  significance  ;  the  ethnological 
survey  of  the  races  of  the  world  tells  much  ;  the  ethnogra- 
phical comparison  of  their  condition  tells  more. 

Arrest  and  decline  in  civilization  are  to  be  recognized  as 
among  the  more  frequent  and  powerful  operations  of  national 
life.  That  knowledge,  arts,  and  institutions  should  decay  in 
certain  districts,  that  peoples  once  i^rogressive  should  lag 
behind  and  be  passed  by  advancing  neighbours,  that  some- 
times even  societies  of  men  should  recede  into  rudeness  and 
misery — all  these  are  phenomena  with  which  modern  history 
is  familiar.  In  judging  of  the  relation  of  the  lower  to  the 
higher  stages  of  civilization,  it  is  essential  to  gain  some  idea 
how  far  it  may  have  been  aftected  by  such  degeneration. 
"What  kind  of  evidence  can  direct  observation  and  history 
give  as  to  the  degradation  of  men  from  a  civilized  condition 
towards  that  of  savagery  ?  In  our  great  cities,  the  so-called 
"dangerous  classes  "are  sunk  in  hideous  misery  and  de- 
pravity.    If    we    have    to    strike   a   balance   between   the 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


4:j 


Papuans  of  New  Caledonia  and  the  communities  of  Euro- 
pean beggars  and  thieves,  we  may  sadly  acknowledge  that 
we  have  in  our  midst  something  worse  than  savagery.  But 
it  is  not  savagery ;  it  is  broken  down  civilization.  Nega- 
tively, the  inmates  of  a  Whitechapel  casual  ward  and  of  a 
Hottentot  kraal  agree  in  their  want  of  the  knowledge  and 
virtue  of  the  higher  culture.  But  positively,  their  mental  and 
moral  characteristics  are  utterly  different.  Thus,  the  savage 
life  is  essentially  devoted  to  gaining  subsistence  from  nature, 
which  is  just  what  the  proletarian  life  is  not.  Their  rela- 
tions to  civilized  life — the  one  of  independence,  the  other 
of  dependence — are  absolutely  opposite.  To  my  mind  the 
popular  phrases  about  "  cit}'^  savages  "  and  "  street  Arabs  " 
seem  like  comparing  a  ruined  house  to  a  builder's  yard. 
It  is  more  to  the  purpose  to  notice  how  war  and  misrule, 
famine  and  pestilence,  have  again  and  again  devastated  coun- 
tries, reduced  their  population  to  miserable  remnants,  and 
lowered  their  level  of  civilization,  and  how  the  isolated  life 
of  wild  country  districts  seems  sometimes  tending  towards 
savagery.  So  far  as  we  know,  however,  none  of  these 
causes  have  ever  really  reproduced  a  savage  community. 
For  an  ancient  account  of  degeneration  under  adverse  cir- 
cumstances, Ovid's  mention  of  the  unhappy  colony  of  Tomi 
on  the  Black  Sea  is  a  case  in  point,  though  perhaps  not 
to  be  taken  too  literally.  Among  its  mixed  Greek  and 
barbaric  population,  harassed  and  carried  off  into  slavery  by 
the  Sarmatian  horsemen,  much  as  the  Persians  of  to-day  are 
by  the  Turkomans,  the  poet  describes  the  neglect  of  the 
gardener's  craft,  the  decay  of  textile  arts,  the  barbaric 
clothing  of  hides. 

"  Nee  tamen  hcec  loca  sunt  uUo  pretiosa  metallo : 

Hostis  ab  agiicola  vix  sinit  lUa  fodi. 
Purpura  ssepe  tuos  fulgens  prootexit  aniictuB. 

Sed  non  Sarmatico  tingitur  ilia  mari. 
Vellera  dura  feioint  peoudes,  et  Palladis  uti 

Arte  Tomitanae  non  didicere  nurus. 
Femiua  pro  lana  Ceriulia  munera  frangit, 

Suppositoque  gravem  vertice  portat  aquam. 


H>>.»<M-i». 


44 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


(I 


}i 


Non  hie  pampineis  amicitur  vitibus  ulmus, 
Nulla  prcmunt  ramos  pondere  poma  suo. 

Tristia  deformes  pariunt  absiiithia  campi, 
Terraque  de  fructu  quam  sit  amara,  docet." ' 

Cases  of  exceptioiiiilly  low  civilization  in  Europe  may 
perhaps  be  sometimes  accounted  for  by  degeneration  of  this 
kind.  But  they  seem  more  often  the  relics  of  ancient  un- 
changed barbarism.  The  evidence  from  wild  parts  of 
Ireland  two  or  three  centuries  ago  is  interesting  from  this 
point  of  view.  Acts  of  Parliament  were  passed  against  the 
inveterate  habits  of  fastening  ploughs  to  the  horses'  tails, 
and  of  burning  oats  from  the  straw  to  save  the  trouble  of 
threshing.  In  the  18tli  century  Ireland  could  still  be  thus 
described  in  satire  : — 

"  'llio  Western  isle  renowned  for  bogs, 
For  tories  and  for  great  wolf-dogs, 
For  drawing  hobbios  by  the  tails^, 
And  thresT-ing  corn  with  fiery  flails."  ^ 

Fynes  Moryson's  description  of  the  wild  or  "  meere  "  Irish, 
about  IGOO,  is  amazing.  The  very  lords  of  them,  he  says, 
dwelt  in  poor  clay  houses,  or  cabins  of  boughs  covered  with 
turf.  In  many  parts  men  as  well  as  women  had  in  very 
winter  time  but  a  linen  rag  about  the  loins  and  a  woollen 
mantle  on  their  bodies,  so  that  it  would  turn  a  man's 
stomach  to  see  an  old  woman  in  the  morning  before  break- 
fast. He  notices  their  habit  of  burning  oats  from  the 
straw,  and  making  cakes  thereof.  They  had  no  tables,  but 
set  their  meat  on  a  bundle  of  grass.  They  feasted  on  fallen 
horses,  and  seethed  pieces  of  beef  and  pork  with  the  un- 
washed entrails  of  beasts  in  a  hollow  tree,  lapped  in  a  raw 
cow's  hide,  and  so  set  over  the  fire,  and  they  drank  milk 
warmed  with   a   stone  first  cast  into   the   fire.^     Another 

'  Ovid.  Ex  Ponto,  iii.  8  ;  see  Grotu,  '  History  of  Greece,'  vol.  xii.  p.  641. 

»  "W.  C.  Taylor,  'Nat.  Hist,  of  Society,'  vol.  i.  p.  202. 

'  Fynes  Moryson,  'Itinerary;'  Loiidon,  1617,  part  iii.  p.  162,  etc.;  J. 
Evans  in  •  Arclioeologiii,'  vol.  xli.  See  fliscnption  of  hide-boiiinc:,  etc.,  among 
the  wdd  Irish  about  1550,  in  Andrew  iJoordc,  '  Introduction  of  Knowledge,' 
ed.  by  F.  J.  Furnivall,  Early  English  Text  Soc.  1870. 


THE    DEYKT,OPMKNT    OF    CIJLTrilE. 


district  remarkable  for  a  barbaric  simplicity  of  life  is  tlic 
Hebrides.     In  1868  Mr.  Walter  Morrison  there  bought  from 
an  old  woman  at  Stornoway  the  service  of  earthenware  she  was 
actually  using,  of  which  he  gave  me  a  crock.     These  earthen 
vessels,    unglazcd  and  made  by  hand  without  the  potter's 
wh<?f>l,  might  pass  in  a  museum  as  indifferent  specimens  of 
savage  manufacture.     Such  a  modern  state  of  the  potter's 
art  in  the  Hebrides  fits  well  with  George  Buchanan's  state- 
ment in  the  16th  century  that  the  islanders  used  to  boil 
meat  in  the  beast's  own  paunch  or   hide.^     Early  in  the 
18th  century  Martin  mentions  as  prevalent  there  the  ancient 
way  of  dressing  corn  by  burning  it  dexterously  from  the  ear, 
which  he  notices  to  be  a  ver\'  quick  process,  thence  called 
"  graddan  "  {Gaelic,  grnd  =  quick). ^     Thus  we  see  that  the 
habit  of  burning  out  the  grain,  for  which  the  "  meere  Irish  " 
i'.  ^   ^  leproached,  was  really  the  keeping  up  of  an  old  Keltic 
8,.'         '  without  its  practical  use.      So  the  appearance  in 
n.  "*     .1  Keltic  districts  of  other  widespread  arts  of  the  lower 
culture — hide-boiling,  like  that  of  the  Scythians  in  Herodo- 
tus, and  stone-boiling,  like  that  of  the  Assinaboins  of  North 
America — seems  to  fit  not   so  well  with  degradation  from  a 
high  as  with  survival  from  a  low  civilization.      The  Irish  and 
the  Hebrideans  had  been  for  ages  under  the  infiuence  of  com- 
paratively high  civilization,  which  nevertheless  may  have  left 
unaltered  much  of  the  older  and  ruder  habit  of  the  people. 

Instances  of  civilized  men  taking  to  a  wild  life  in  out- 
lying districts  of  the  world,  and  ceasing  to  obtain  or  want 
the  appliances  of  civilization,  give  more  distinct  evidence  of 
degradation.  In  connexion  with  this  state  of  things  tak»'s 
place  the  nearest  known  approach  to  an  independent  dege- 
neration from  a  civilized  to  a  savage  state.  This  hai)pens 
in  mixed  races,  whose  standard  of  civilization  may  be  more 
or  less  below  that  of  the  higher  race.  The  mutineers  of  the 
Bounty,  with  their  Polynesian  wives,  founded  a  rude  but 


'  Uuchanan,  •  Keruiu  Scoticarum  Hiatoria  ; '  Edinburgh,  1628,  p.  7.     Se« 
'  Early  History  of  Munkiiul,'  'Jnd  eil.  p.  272. 

Martin,  '  Description  of  Western  Islands,'  in  Pinkorton,  vol.  iii.  p.  639. 


'*■■>«» 


46 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


not  savage  community  on  Pitcairn's  Island.^  The  mixed 
Portuguese  and  native  races  of  the  East  Indies  and 
Africa  lead  a  life  below  the  European  standard,  but  not  a 
savage  life.*  The  Gauchos  of  the  South  American  Pampas, 
a  mixed  European  and  Indian  race  of  equestrian  herdsmen, 
are  described  as  sitting  about  on  ox-skulls,  making  broth  in 
horns  with  hot  cinders  heajied  round,  living  on  meat  with- 
out vegetables,  and  altogether  leading  a  foul,  brutal, 
comfortless,  degenerate,  but  not  savage  life.'  One  step 
beyond  this  brmgs  us  to  the  cases  of  individual  civilized 
men  being  absorbed  in  savage  tribes  and  adopting  the 
savage  life,  on  which  they  exercise  Ht'le  influence  for  im- 
provement ;  the  children  of  these  men  may  come  distinctly 
under  the  category  of  savages.  These  cases  of  mixed 
breeds,  however,  do  not  show  a  low  culture  actually 
produced  as  the  result  of  degeneration  from  a  high  one. 
Their  theory  is  that,  given  a  higher  and  a  lower  civilization 
existing  among  two  races,  a  mixed  race  between  the  two 
may  take  to  the  lower  or  an  intermediate  condition. 

Degeneration  probably  operates  even  more  actively  in 
the  lower  than  in  the  higher  culture.  Barbarous  nations 
and  savage  hordes,  with  their  less  knowledge  and  scantier 
appliances,  would  seem  peculiarly  exposed  to  degrading 
influences.  In  Africa,  for  instance,  there  seems  to  have 
been  in  modern  centuries  a  falling  off  in  culture,  probably 
due  in  a  considerable  degree  to  foreign  influence.  Mr.  J. 
L.  Wilson,  contrasting  the  16th  and  17th  century  accounts 
of  powerful  negro  kingdoms  in  West  Africa  with  the  present 
small  communities,  with  little  or  no  tradition  of  their  fore- 
fiithers*  more  extended  political  orginazation,  looks 
especially  to  the  slave-trade  as  the  deteriorating  cause.*    In 


>  '  Mutiny  of  the  Bounty,'  etc. 

"  Wallace,  'Malay  Archipelago,'  vol.  i.  pp.  42,  471;  vol.  ii.  pp.  11,  43,  48; 
Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth.,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  492-6  ;  D.  and  C.  Livingstone,  *Exp.  to 
Zambesi,'  p.  45. 

•'•  Soutiiey,  '  History  of  Brazil,'  vol.  iii.  p.  422. 

*  J.  L.  Wilson,  'W.  Afr.,'p.  189. 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


47 


South-east  Africa,  also,  a  comparatively  high  barbiirii: 
culture,  which  we  especially  associate  with  the  old  descrip- 
tions of  the  kingdom  of  Monomotapa,  seems  to  have  fallen 
away,  and  the  remarkable  ruins  of  buildings  of  hewn  stone 
fitted  without  mortar  indicate  a  former  civilization  above 
that  of  the  present  native  population.^  In  North  America, 
Father  Charlevoix  remarks  of  the  Iroquois  of  the  last 
century,  that  in  old  times  they  used  to  build  their  cal)ins 
better  than  other  nations,  and  better  than  they  do  them- 
selves now ;  they  carved  rude  figures  in  relief  on  them  ;  but 
since  in  various  expeditions  almost  all  their  villages  have 
been  burnt,  they  have  not  taken  the  trouble  to  restore  them 
in  their  old  condition.^  The  degradation  of  the  Cheyenne 
Indians  is  matter  of  history.  Persecuted  by  their  enemies 
the  Sioux,  and  dislodged  at  last  even  from  their  fortified 
village,  the  heart  of  the  tribe  was  broken.  Their  numbers 
were  thinned,  they  no  longer  dared  to  establish  themselves 
in  a  permanent  abode,  they  gave  up  the  cultivation  of  the 
soil,  and  became  a  tribe  of  wandering  hunters,  with  horses 
for  their  only  valuable  possession,  which  every  year  they 
bartered  for  a  supply  of  corn,  beans,  pumpkins,  and 
European  merchandise,  and  then  returned  into  the  heart  of 
the  prairies.^  When  in  the  liocky  Mountains,  Lord 
Milton  and  Dr.  Cheadle  came  upon  an  outlying  fragment 
of  the  Shushwap  race,  without  horses  or  dogs,  sheltering 
themselves  under  rude  temporary  slants  of  bark  or  matting, 
falling  year  by  year  into  lower  misery,  and  rapidly  dying 
out;  this  is  another  example  of  the  degeneration  which  no 
doubt  has  lowered  or  destroyed  many  a  savage  people."* 
There  are  tribes  who  are  the  very  outcasts  of  savage  life. 
There  is  reason  to  look  upon  the  miserable  Digger  Indians 


*  Waitz,  '  Antliropologie,'  vol.  ii.  p.  359,  see  91 ;  Du  Chaillu,  '  Ashango- 
land,' p.  116. 

*  Charlevoix,  '  Noiivelle  France,'  vol,  vi.  p.  51. 
'  Irving,  'Astoria,'  vol.  ii.  eh.  v. 

*  Milton  and  Cheadle,  'North  West  Passage  by  Laud,'  p.  241  ;   Waitz, 
rol.  iii.  pp.  74—6. 


m 


n 


'  i 

It 


)t 


♦8 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURR 


of  North  America  and  the  Bushmen  of  South  Africa  as  tbt 
persecuted  remnants  of  tribes  who  have  seen  happier  days.' 
The  traditions  of  the  lower  races  of  their  ancestors*  bettor 
life  maj'  sometimes  be  real  recollections  of  a  not  far  distant 
past.  The  Algonquin  Indians  look  back  to  old  days  as  to 
)i  golden  age  when  life  was  better  than  now,  when  they  had 
better  laws  and  leaders,  and  manners  less  rude.^  And 
indeed,  knowing  what  we  do  of  their  history,  we  may  admit 
that  they  have  cause  to  remember  in  miserj'  happiness  gone 
by.  AVell,  too,  might  the  rude  Kamchadal  declare  that  the 
world  is  growing  worse  and  worse,  that  men  are  becom- 
ing fewer  and  viler,  and  food  scarcer,  for  the  hunter,  and 
the  bear,  and  the  reindeer  are  hurrying  away  from  here  to 
the  happier  life  in  the  regions  below.^  It  would  be  a  valuable 
contribution  to  the  study  of  civilization  to  have  the  action 
of  decline  and  fall  investigated  on  a  wider  and  more  exact 
basis  of  evidence  than  has  yet  been  attempted.  The  cases 
here  stated  are  probably  but  part  of  a  long  series  which 
might  be  brought  forward  to  prove  degeneration  in  culture 
to  have  been,  by  no  means  indeed  the  primary'  cause  of  the 
existence  of  barbarism  and  savagery  in  the  world,  but  a 
secondary  action  largely  and  deepl}'  affecting  the  general 
development  of  civilization.  It  may  perhaps  give  no  unfair 
idea  to  compare  degeneration  of  culture,  both  in  its  kind  of 
operation  and  in  its  immense  extent,  to  denudation  in  the 
geological  histor}'  of  the  earth. 

In  judging  of  the  relations  between  savage  and  civilized 
life,  something  may  be  learnt  by  glancing  over  the  divisions 
of  the  human  race.  For  this  end  the  classification  by 
famihes  of  languages  may  be  conveniently  used,  if  checked 
by  the  evidence  of  bodily  characteristics.  No  doubt  speech 
by  itself  is  an  insufficient  guide  in  tracing  national  descent, 
as  witness  the  extreme  cases  of  Jews  in  England,  and  three- 
parts  negro  races  in  the  West  Indies,  nevertheless  speaking 

>  'Early  History  of  Mankind,'  p   187. 
"  Schoolcraft,   '  Algic  Kes.,'  vol.  i.  p,  60. 
•  StoUer,   '  Kanitscliatka,'  p.  272. 


m 


lif 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTUllE. 


4<!> 


' 


English  as  their  mother-tongue.  Still,  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances, connexion  of  speech  does  indicate  more  or  less 
connexion  of  ancestral  race.  As  a  guide  in  tracing  tin* 
history  of  civilization,  language  gives  still  better  evidence, 
for  common  language  to  a  great  extent  involves  common 
culture.  The  race  dominant  enough  to  maintain  or  impose 
its  language,  usually  more  or  less  maintains  or  imposes  its 
civilization  also.  Thus  the  common  descent  of  the  lan- 
guages of  Hindus,  Greeks,  and  Teutons  is  no  doubt  due  in 
great  measure  to  common  ancestry,  but  is  still  more  closely 
bound  up  with  a  common  social  and  intellectual  history, 
with  what  Professor  Max  Miillcr  well  calls  their  "  spiritual 
relationship."  The  wonderful  permanence  of  language 
often  enables  us  to  detect  among  remotely  ancient  and 
distant  tribes  the  traces  of  connected  civilization.  How, 
on  such  grounds,  do  savage  and  civilized  tribes  appear 
to  stand  related,  within  the  various  groups  of  mankind 
connected  historically  by  the  possession  of  kindred 
languages  ? 

The  Semitic  family,  which  represents  one  of  the  oldest 
known  civilizations  of  the  world,  includes  Arabs,  Jews, 
Phoenicians,  Syrians,  etc.,  and  may  have  an  older  as  well  as  a 
newer  connexion  in  North  Africa.  This  famil}'  takes  in  some 
rude  tribes,  but  none  which  would  be  classed  as  savages. 
The  Aryan  I'amily  has  existed  in  Asia  and  Europe  certainly 
for  several  thousand  years,  and  there  are  well-known  and 
well-marked  traces  of  its  early  barbaric  condition,  which  has 
perhap?.  survived  with  least  change  among  secluded  tribes  in 
the  valleys  of  the  Hindu  Kush  and  Himalaya.  There  seems, 
again,  no  known  case  of  any  full  Aryan  tribe  having  become 
saviige.  The  Gypsies  and  other  outcasts  are,  no  doubt, 
partly  Aryan  in  blood,  but  their  degraded  condition  is  not 
savagery.  In  India  there  are  tribes  Aryan  by  language, 
but  whose  physi(iue  is  rather  of  indigenous  type,  and  whose 
ancestry  is  nuiinly  from  indigenous  stocks  with  more  or  less 
mixture  of  the  dominant  Hindu.  Some  tribes  coming 
under  this  category,  as  aniong  the  Bhils  and  Kulis  of  the 

VOL.    ».  B 


50 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


Bombay  Presidency,  speak  dialects  which  are  Hindi  in 
vocabulary  at  least,  whether  or  not  in  grammatical  structure, 
and  yet  the  people  t  cniselves  are  lower  in  culture  than 
some  Hinduized  nations  who  have  retained  their  origiDal 
Dravidian  speech,  the  Tamils  for  instance.  But  these  all 
appear  to  stand  at  higher  stages  of  civilization  than  ai\y 
wild  forest  tribes  of  the  peninsula  who  can  be  reckoned  as 
nearly  savages  ;  all  such  are  non-Aryan  both  in  blood  and 
speech.^  In  Ceylon,  however,  we  seem  to  have  the  rem.ark- 
able  phenomenon  of  a  distinctly  savage  race  speaking  an 
Aryan  dialect.  This  is  the  wild  part  of  the  race  of  Veddas 
or  "hunters,"  of  whom  a  remnant  still  inhabit  the  forest 
land.  These  people  are  dark-skinned  and  flat-nosed,  slight 
of  frame,  and  very  small  of  skull,  and  five  feet  is  a  full 
average  man's  height.  They  are  a  shy,  harmless,  simple 
people,  living  principally  by  hunting ;  they  lime  birds,  take 
fish  by  poisoning  the  water,  and  are  skilful  in  getting  wild 
honey ;  they  liave  bows  with  iron -pointed  arrows,  whicli, 
with  their  hunting  dogs,  are  their  most  valuable  possessions. 
They  dwell  in  caves  or  bark  huts,  and  their  very  word  for  a 
house  is  Singlialese  for  a  hollow  tree  (ruknla) ;  a  patch  of 
bark  was  formerl}'  their  dress,  but  now  a  bit  of  linen  hangs  to 
their  waist-cords ;  tlieir  planting  of  patches  of  ground  is  said 
to  be  recent.  They  count  on  their  fingers,  and  produce  fire 
with  the  simplest  kind  of  fire-drill  twirled  by  hand.  They 
are  most  truthful  and  honest.  Their  monogamy  and  conjugal 
fidelity  contrast  strongly  with  the  opposite  habits  of  the 
more  civilized  Singhalese.  A  remarkable  Vedda  marriage 
custom  sanctioned  a  man's  taking  his  j^ounger  (not  elder) 
sister  as  his  wife  ;  sister-marriage  existing  among  the  Sing- 
halese, but  being  confined  to  the  royal  family.  Mistaken 
statements  have  been  made  as  to  the  Veddas  having  no 
religion,  no  personal  names,  no  language.  Their  religion, 
in  fact,  corresponds  with  the  animism  of  the  ruder  tribes  of 
India ;  some  of  tlieir  names  are  remarkable  as  being  Hindu, 

'  See  G.  Campbell,  'Ethnology  of  India,'  in  Journ.  As.  See.  Beugal,  1866, 
part  ii. 


II 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CU'TURB. 


51 


but  not  in  use  among  the  modem  Sinjjhalese;  their  language 
is  described  as  a  kind  of  Singhalese  patois,  peculiar  in 
dialect  and  utterance.  There  is  no  doubt  attaching  to  the 
visual  opinion  that  the  Veddas  are  in  the  main  descended 
from  the  **  yalckos  "  or  demons ;  i.  e.,  from  the  indigenous 
tribes  of  the  island.  Legend  and  language  concur  to  make 
probable  an  admixture  of  Arj-an  blood  accompanying  the 
adoption  of  Aryan  speech,  but  the  evidence  of  bodily  cha- 
racteristics shows  the  Vedda  race  to  be  principally  of  in- 
digenous prse-Aryan  tA'pe.^ 

The  Tatar  family  of  Northern  Asia  and  Europe  (Turanian, 
if  the  word  be  used  in  a  restricted  sense),  displays  evidence 
of  quite  a  different  kind.  This  wide-lying  group  of  tribes 
and  nations  has  members  nearly  or  quite  touching  the 
savAge  level  in  ancient  and  even  modern  times,  such  as 
Ostyaks,  Tunguz,  Samoyeds,  Lapps,  while  more  or  less 
higli  ranges  of  culture  are  represented  by  Mongols,  Turks, 
and  Hungarians.  Here,  however,  it  is  unquestionable  that 
the  rude  tribes  represent  the  earlier  condition  of  the  Tatar 
race  at  large,  from  which  its  more  mixed  and  civilized 
peoples,  mostly  by  adopting  the  foreign  culture  of  Buddhist, 
Moslem,  and  Christian  nations,  and  partly  by  internal 
development,  are  well  known  to  have  risen.  The  ethnolog}'' 
of  South-E  astern  Asia  is  somewhat  obscure  ;  but  if  we  may 
classify  under  one  heading  the  native  races  of  Siam,  Birma, 
otc,  the  wilder  tribes  may  be  considered  as  representing 
oariier  conditions,  for  the  higher  culture  of  this  region  is 
obviously  foreign,  especially  of  Buddhist  origin.  The  Malay 
race  is  also  remarkable  for  the  range  of  civilization  repre- 
sented by  tribes  classed  as  belonging  to  it.  If  the  wild 
tribes  of  the  Malayan  peninsula  and  Borneo  be  comnared 
-vvith  the  semi-civilized  nations  of  Java  and  Sumatra,  it 
ai)pears  that  part  of  the  race  survives  to  represent  an  early 
savage  state,  while  part  is  found  in  possession  of  a  civiliza- 

*  J.  Bailey,  '  Veildahs,'  in  Tr.  Etli.  Soc,  vol.  ii.  p.  278  ;  see  vol.  iii.  f. 
70.  Compare  Robert  Knox,  'Histoiiciil  Relation  of  Ceylon.'  Jiomlon,  16S1, 
jiart  iii.  clrj,p,  i. ;  Sir  J.  E.  Teiineut,  'Ceylon,'  etc. 


II 


H 


!    1 
■t    1^ 


nil 


,1  . 

IV  1  1, 


52 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTUV.B. 


tion  which  the  first  glaiu  e  shows  to  have  been  mostly 
borrowed  from  Iliiulu  and  Moslem  sources.  Some  forest 
tribes  of  the  peiiiusulu  seem  to  be  representatives  of  the 
Malay  race  at  a  ver}'  low  level  of  culture,  how  far  originttl 
and  how  far  degraded  it  is  not  easy  to  say.  Among  them 
the  very  rude  Orang  Sabimba,  who  have  no  agriculture  and 
no  boats,  give  a  remarkable  account  of  themselves,  that 
they  are  descendants  of  shipwrecked  Malays  from  the  Bugis 
country,  but  were  so  harassed  by  pirates  that  tliey  gave  uj) 
civilization  and  cultivation,  and  vowhI  not  to  eat  fowls, 
which  betrayed  them  by  their  crowing.  So  they  plant 
nothing,  but  eat  wild  fruit  and  vegetables,  and  all  animals 
but  the  fowl.  This,  if  at  all  founded  on  fact,  is  an  interesting 
case  of  degeneration.  But  savages  usually  invent  myths  to 
account  for  peculiar  habits,  as  where,  in  the  same  district, 
the  Biduanda  Kallang  account  for  their  not  cultivating  the 
ground  by  the  story  tliat  their  ancestors  vowed  not  to  make 
plantations.  Another  rude  people  of  the  Malay  peninsula 
are  the  Jakuns,  a  simple,  kindl}'  race,  among  whom  some 
trace  their  pedigree  to  a  pair  of  white  monkeys,  while  others 
declare  that  they  are  descendants  of  white  men ;  and  indeed 
there  is  some  ground  for  supposing  these  latter  to  be  reallj' 
of  mixed  race,  for  they  use  a  few  Portuguese  words,  and  a  re- 
port exists  of  some  refugees  having  settled  up  the  country.^ 
The  Polynesians,  Papuans,  and  Australians  represent  grades 
of  savagery  spread  each  over  its  own  vast  area  in  a  com- 
paratively homogeneous  way.  Lastly,  the  relations  of 
savagery  to  higher  conditions  are  remarkable,  but  obscure, 
on  the  American  continents.  There  are  several  great 
linguistic  families  whose  members  were  discovered  in  a 
savage  state  throughout :  such  are  the  Esquimaux,  Algon- 
quin, and  Guarani  groups.  On  the  other  hand  there  were 
three  apparently  unconnected  districts  of  semi-civilization 
reaching  a  liigh  barbaric  level,  viz.,  in  Mexico  and  Ceniral 
America,  Bogota,  and  Peru.  Between  these  higher  and 
lower  conditions  were  races  at  the  level  of  the  Natchez  o? 

'  Jouru.  lud.  Areliir..  vol.  i.  pp^  295-9;  vol.  ii.  ?.  23?, 


.' 


B 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CUI/l'URE. 


53 


Loviisiann  and  ilie  Apalaclios  of  Florida.  Linguistic  con* 
nexion  is  not  uiilaiowni  between  the  more  advanced  peoples 
and  the  lower  races  around  them.^  But  definite  evidence 
showing  the  higher  culture  to  have  arisen  from  the  lower, 
or  the  lower  to  have  fallen  from  the  higher,  is  scarcely 
forthcoming.  Both  operations  ma}'^  in  degree  have 
happened. 

It  is  apparent,  from  such  general  inspection  of  this 
ethnological  problem,  that  it  would  repay  a  for  closer  study 
'ban  it  has  as  yet  received.  As  the  evidence  stands  at 
present,  it  appears  that  when  in  any  race  some  branches 
uuch  excel  the  rest  in  culture,  this  more  often  happens  by 
elevation  than  by  subsidence.  But  this  elevation  is  much 
more  apt  to  be  produced  by  foreign  than  b}'  native  action. 
Civilization  is  a  plant  much  oftener  propagated  than  de- 
veloped. As  regards  the  lower  races,  this  accords  with  the 
results  of  European  intercourse  with  savage  tribes  during 
the  last  three  or  four  centuries  ;  so  far  as  these  tribes  have 
Rurvived  the  process,  they  have  assimilated  more  or  less  of 
European  culture  and  risen  towards  the  European  level,  as 
in  Polynesia,  South  Africa,  South  America.  Another  im- 
portant point  becomes  manifest  from  this  ethnological 
survey.  The  fact  that,  during  so  many  thousand  years  of 
knovvn  existence,  neither  the  Aryan  nor  the  Semitic  stock 
Appears  to  have  thrown  oif  any  direct  savage  offshoot  recog- 
nisable by  the  age-enduring  test  of  language,  tells,  with  some 
force,  against  the  probability  of  degradation  to  the  savage 
level  ever  happening  from  high-level  civilization. 

With  regard  to  the  opinions  of  older  writers  on  early 
<  jvilization,  whether  progressionists  or  degenerationists,  it 
nsust  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  evidence  at  their  disposal 


I 


*  For  the  connexion  between  the  Aztec  language  and  the  Sonoran  family 
extending  N.W.  toward  the  sources  of  the  Missouri,  see  Bu.schinann,  'Spurcn 
lier  Aztekischen  Sprache  ira  Nbrdlichen  Mexico,'  etc.,  in  Abh.  der  Akad.  der 
V^issi nsch.  1854  ;  Berlin,  1859;  also  Tr.  Eth.  Soc,  vol.  ii.  p.  130  For  the 
<iojnexion  between  the  Natchez  and  Maya  languages,  see  Daniel  G.  Hriiitim, 
in  'American  Historical  Magazine,'  1867,  vol.  i.  p,  16;  and  *  Myths  of  the 
N'w  World,"  p.  28 


P 
III 


iti 


M- 


Ml; 


54 


THE  dp:velopmi:nt  of  culture. 


IM 


fell  far  short  of  even  the  miserably  imperfect  data  no,-; 
accessible.  Criticizing  an  18th  centuiy  ethnol'i^ist  h  like 
criticizing  an  18tli  ccnitury  geologist.  The  older  writer  may 
have  been  far  abler  than  his  modern  critic,  but  he  had  not 
the  same  materials.  Especially  he  wanted  the  guidance  or 
Prehistoric  Archieologj',  a  department  of  research  only 
established  on  a  scientific  footing  within  the  last  few  years. 
It  is  essential  to  gain  a  clear  view  of  the  bearmg  of  this 
newer  knowledge  on  the  old  problem. 

Chronolog}',  though  regarding  as  more  or  less  fictitious 
the  immense  dynastic  schemes  of  the  Egyptians,  Hindus, 
and  Chinese,  i)assiiig  as  they  do  into  mere  ciphering-booh 
suras  with  years  for  units,  nevertheless  admits  that  existing 
monuments  carry  back  the  traces  of  comparatively  high 
civilization  to  a  distance  of  above  five  thousand  years.  By 
piecing  together  Eastern  and  Western  docunieiitary  evidence, 
it  seems  that  the  great  religious  divisions  of  the  Aryan  race, 
to  which  modern  Brahmauism,  Zarathustrism,  and  Buddliisiu 
are  due,  belong  to  a  period  of  remotely  ancient  history. 
Even  if  we  are  not  quite  sure,  with  Professor  Max  Miiller, 
in  the  preface  to  his  translation  of  the  "  Pag  Veda,"  that 
this  collection  of  Aryan  hymns  "  will  take  and  maintain  for 
ever  its  position  as  the  most  ancient  of  books  in  the  library 
of  mankind,"  and  if  we  do  not  full}'-  admit  the  stringency  of 
his  reckonings  of  its  date  in  centuries  B.C.,  j^et  we  must 
grant  that  he  shows  cause  to  refer  its  composition  to  a  very 
ancient  period,  where  it  then  proves  that  a  comparatively 
high  barbaric  culture  already  existed.  The  linguistic  argu- 
ment for  the  remotely  ancient  common  origin  of  the  Indo- 
European  nations,  in  a  degree  as  to  their  bodily  descent, 
and  in  a  greater  degree  as  to  their  civilization,  tends  toward 
the  same  result.  So  it  is  again  with  Egypt.  Baron  Bunsen's 
calculations  of  Egyj^tian  dynasties  in  thousands  of  years  are 
indeed  both  disputable  and  disputed,  but  they  are  based  on 
facts  which  at  any  late  authorize  the  reception  of  a  long 
chronology.  To  go  no  further  than  the  identification  of  two 
or  three  Egyptian  names  mentioned  in  Biblicid  iind  Classical 


V 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


55 


history,  we  gain  a  strong  impression  of  remote  antiquity. 
Such  are  the  names  of  Shisiiauii ;  of  the  Psammitichos  line, 
whose  obelisks  are  to  be  seen  in  Rome ;  of  Tirhakah,  King 
of  Ethiopia,  whose  nurse's  coffin  is  in  the  Florence  Museum; 
of  the  city  of  Rameses,  plainly  connected  with  that  great 
Ramesside  line  which  Egyptologists  call  the  19th  Dynasty. 
Here,  before  classic  culture  had  arisen,  the  culture  of  Egypt 
culminated,  and  behind  this  time  lies  the  somewhat  less 
advanced  age  of  the  Pyramid  kings,  and  behind  this  again 
the  indefinite  lapse  of  ages  which  such  a  civilization  required 
for  its  production.  Again,  though  no  part  of  the  Old  T(  s- 
tameut  can  satisfactoril}'  prove  for  itself  an  antijuity  of 
composition  approaching  that  of  the  earliest  Egyr^ian 
hieroglyphic  inscriptions,  yet  all  critics  must  admit  that  the 
older  of  the  historical  books  give  on  the  one  hand  contem- 
porary documents  showing  considerable  culture  ir.  +'ie 
Semitic  world  at  a  date  which  in  comparison  with  las'o'i 
history  is  ancient,  while  on  the  other  hand  they  afford 
evidence  by  way  of  chronicle,  carrying  back  ages  farther  the 
record  of  a  somewhat  advanced  barbaric  civilization.  Now 
if  the  development-theory  is  to  account  for  phenomena  such 
as  these,  its  chronological  demand  must  be  no  small  one, 
and  the  more  so  when  it  is  admitted  that  in  the  lower  ranges 
of  culture  progress  would  be  extremely  slow  in  comparison 
with  that  which  experience  shows  among  nations  already  far 
advanced.  On  these  conditions  of  the  fii"^t  appearance  of 
the  middle  civilization  being  thrown  I' '■ !.  to  distant 
antiquity,  and  of  slow  development  being  required  to 
perform  its  heavy  task  in  ages  still  more  remote.  Prehistoric 
Archseology  cheerfully  takes  up  the  problem.  And,  indeed, 
far  from  being  dismayed  by  the  vastness  of  the  period 
required  on  the  narrowest  computation,  the  prehistoric 
archaeologist  shows  even  too  much  disposition  to  revel  in 
calculations  of  thousands  of  years,  as  a  financier  does  in 
reckonings  of  thousands  of  pounds,  in  a  liberal  and  maybe 
Bomewhat  reckless  way. 

Prehistoric  Archaeology  is  fully  alive  to  facts  which  may 


''AJ 


■56 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


it. 


i: 


n  l: 


'        I! 


bear  on  degeneration  in  culture.  Such  are  the  colossnl 
humi^n  figures  of  hewn  stone  in  Easter  Island,  which  may 
possibly  have  been  shaped  by  the  ancestors  of  the  existing 
islanders,  whose  present  resources,  however,  are  quite  un- 
equal to  the  execution  of  such  gigantic  works.'  A  much 
more  important  case  is  that  of  the  former  inhabitants  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  In  districts  where  the  native  tribes 
known  in  modern  times  do  not  rank  high  even  as  savages, 
there  formerly  dwelt  a  race  whom  ethnologists  call  the 
Mound-Builders,  from  the  amazing  extent  of  their  mounds 
and  enclosures,  of  which  there  is  a  single  group  occupying 
an  area  of  four  square  miles.  To  have  constructed  such 
works  the  Mound-Builders  must  have  been  a  numerous 
population,  mainly  subsisting  by  agriculture,  and  indeed 
vestiges  of  their  ancient  tillage  are  still  to  be  found.  The 
civilization  of  these  people  has  been,  however,  sometimes 
overrated.  Their  earthworks  did  not  require,  as  has  been 
thought,  standards  of  measurement  and  means  of  determin- 
ing angles,  for  a  cord  and  a  bundle  of  stakes  would  be  a  suf- 
ficient set  of  instruments  to  lay  out  any  of  them.  „  Their 
use  of  native  copper,  hammered  into  shape  for  cutting 
instruments,  ia  similar  to  that  of  some  of  the  savage  tribes 
farther  north.  On  the  whole,  judging  by  their  earthworks, 
fields,  pottery,  stone  implements,  and  other  remains,  they 
seem  to  have  belonged  to  those  high  savage  or  barbaric 
tribes  of  the  Southern  States,  of  whom  the  Creeks  and 
Cherokees,  as  described  by  Bartram,  may  be  taken  as 
typical.^  If  any  of  the  wild  roving  hunting  tril)OS  now  found 
living  near  the  huge  earthworks  of  the  Mound-Builders  are 
the  descendants  of  this  somewhat  advanced  race,  then  a  very 
considerable  degradation  has  taken  place.  The  question  is 
an  open  one.     The  explanation  of  the  traces  of  tillage  may 


m 


*  J.  H.  Lamprey,  in  Trans,  of  Prehistoric  Congress,  Norwich,  1868,  p.  60 ; 
J.  Linton  Palmer,  in  Jonrn.  Eth.  Soc,  vol.  i.,  1869. 

"  Squier  and  Davis,  '  Mon.  of  Mississippi  Valley,'  etc.,  in  Smithsonian 
Contr.,  vol.  ii  1848.  See  Lubbock,  'Prehistoric  Times,'  chap.  vii.  ;  Waitz, 
*  Anthropoloj^ie,'  vol.  iii.  p.  72.  Bartram,  'Greek and  Cherokee  Ind.,'  la  Tr. 
Amer.  Ethnol.  Soc,  vol.  iii.  part  i. 


1 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


57 


perhaps  in  this  case  be  like  that  of  remains  of  old  cultiva- 
tion-terraces in  Borneo,  the  work  of  Chinese  colonists 
whose  descendants  have  mostly  been  merged  in  the  mass  of 
the  population  and  follow  the  native  habits.^  On  the  other 
hand,  the  evidence  of  locality  may  be  misleading  as  to  race. 
A  traveller  in  Greenland,  coming  on  the  ruined  stone  build- 
ings at  Kakortok,  would  not  argue  justly  that  the  Esquimaux 
are  degenerate  descendants  of  ancestors  capable  of  such 
architecture,  for  in  fact  these  are  the  remains  of  a  church 
and  baptistery  built  by  the  ancient  Scandinavian  settlers.^ 
On  the  whole  it  is  remarkable  how  little  of  colourable 
evidence  of  degeneration  has  been  disclosed  by  archaeology. 
Its  negative  evidence  tells  strongly  the  other  way.  As  an 
instance  may  be  quoted  Sir  John  Lubbock's  argument  against 
the  idea  that  tribes  now  ignorant  of  metallurgy  and  pottery 
formerly  possessed  but  have  since  lost  these  arts.  "  We 
may  also  assert,  on  a  general  proposition,  that  no  weapons 
or  instruments  of  metal  have  ever  been  found  in  any  country 
inhabited  by  savages  wholly  ignorant  of  metallurgy.  A  still 
stronger  case  is  afforded  by  pottery.  Pottery  is  not  easily 
destroyed ;  when  known  at  all  it  is  always  abundant,  and  it 
possesses  two  qualities,  namel}',  those  of  being  easy  to  break, 
and  yet  difficult  to  destroy,  which  render  it  very  valuable  in 
an  archaeological  point  of  view.  Moreover,  it  is  in  most 
cases  associated  with  burials.  It  is,  therefore,  a  very  signi- 
ficant fact,  that  no  fragment  of  pottery  has  ever  been  found 
in  Australia,  New  Zealand,  or  the  Polynesian  Islands."^ 
How  different  a  state  of  things  the  popular  degeneration- 
theory  would  lead  us  to  expect  is  pointedly  suggested  by 
Sir  Charles  Lyell's  sarcastic  sentences  in  his  *  Antiquity  of 
Man.*  Had  the  original  stock  of  mankind,  he  argues,  been 
really  endowed  with  superior  intellectual  powers  and  inspired 
knowledge,  while  possessing  the  same  improvable  nature  as 
their  posterity,  how  extreme  a  point  of  advancement  would 


»  St.  John,  '  Life  in  Forests  of  Far  East,'  vol.  ii.  p.  327. 

"  Rafn, '  Americas  Arctiske  Landos  Gamlo  Geographic,'  pi.  vii.,  yiil. 

*  Lubbock,  in  '  Report  of  British  Association,  Dundee,  1867,'  p.  121, 


'{<!i 


58 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


they  have  reached.  "  Instead  of  the  rudest  pottery  or  flint 
tools,  so  irregular  in  form  as  to  cause  the  unpractised  eye 
to  doubt  whether  they  afford  unmistakable  evidence  of 
design,  we  should  now  be  finding  sculptured  fonns  surpass- 
ing in  beauty  the  master-pieces  of  Phidias  or  Praxiteles ; 
lines  of  buried  railways  or  electric  telegraphs,  from  which 
the  best  engineers  of  our  day  might  gain  invaluable  hints ; 
astronomical  instruments  and  microscopes  of  more  advanced 
construction  than  any  known  in  Europe,  and  other  indica- 
tions of  perfection  in  the  arts  and  sciences,  such  as  the 
nineteenth  century  has  not  yet  witnessed.  Still  farther 
would  the  triumphs  of  inventive  genius  be  found  to  have 
been  carried,  when  the  later  deposits,  now  assigned  to  the 
ages  of  bronze  and  iron,  were  formed.  Vainly  sliould  we  be 
straining  our  imaginations  to  guess  the  possible  uses  and 
meaning  of  such  relics — machines,  perhaps,  for  navigating 
the  air  or  exploring  the  depths  of  the  ocean,  or  for  calcula- 
ting arithmetical  problems  beyond  the  wants  or  even  the 
conception  of  living  mathematicians."^ 

The  master-key  to  the  investigation  of  man's  primaeval 
condition  is  held  by  Prehistoric  Archfeology.  This  key  is 
the  evidence  of  the  Stone  Age,  proving  that  men  of  remotely 
ancient  ages  were  in  the  savage  state.  Ever  since  the  long- 
delayed  recognition  of  M.  Boucher  de  Perthes'  discoveries 
(1841  and  onward)  of  the  flint  implements  in  the  Drift 
gravels  of  the  Somme  Valley,  evidence  has  been  accumulating 
over  a  wide  European  area  to  show  that  the  ruder  Stone 
Age,  represented  by  implements  of  the  Pala;olithic  or  Drift 
type,  prevailed  among  savage  tribes  vi  the  Quaternary 
period,  the  contemporari  s  of  the  mammoth  and  the  woolly 
rhinoceros,  in  ages  for  which  Geology  asserts  an  antiquity 
far  more  remote  than  History  can  avail  to  substantiate  for 
the  human  race.  Mr.  John  Frere  had  already  written  in 
1797  respecting  such  flint  instruments  discovered  at  Hoxne 
in  Sufl'oUc.  '*  The  situation  in  which  these  weapons  were 
found  may  tempt  us  to  refer  them  to  a  very  remote  period 

'  Lyell, '  Antiquity  of  Mini,'  c'laii.  xix. 


I 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CI'LTURE. 


59 


ft 

B 


y 
y 

y 

>r 

Le 
[e 
Id 


indeed,  even  ')«i^yjnd  that  of  the  present  world."*      The 
vast  lapse  of  time  through  which  the  history  of  London  has 
represented  the  history  of  human  civilization,  is  to  my  mind 
one  of  the  most  suggestive  facts  disclosed  by  archaeology. 
There   the   antiquary,  excavating   but   a   few  yards   deep, 
may  descend   from   the   debris   representing    our   modern 
life,  to  relics  of  the  art  and  science  of  the  Middle  Ages,  to 
signs  of  Norman,  Saxon,  Romano-British  times,  to  traces 
of  the  higher  Stone  Age.     And  on  his  way  from  Temple 
Bar  to  the  Great  Northern  Station  he  passes  near  the  spot 
(**  opposite  to  black  Mary's,  near  Grayes  inn  lane  ")  where 
a  drift  implement  of  black  flint  was  found  with  the  skeleton 
of  an  elephant  by  Mr.  Conyers,  about  a  century  and  a  half 
ago,  the  relics  side  by  side  of  the  London  mammoth  and 
the  London  savage.^     Li  the  gravel-beds    of  Europe,  the 
laterite  of  India,  and  other  more  superficial  localities,  where 
relics  of  the  Palseolithic  Age  are  found,  what  principally 
testifies  to  man's  condition  is  the  extreme  rudeness  of  his 
Btone  implements,  and  the  absence  of  even  edge-grinding. 
The  natural  inference  that  this  indicates  a  low  savage  state 
is  confirmed  in  the  caves  of  Central  France.     There  a  race 
of  men,  who  have  left  indeed  really  artistic  portraits  of 
themselves   and  the   reindeer  and   mammoths  they   lived 
among,  seem,  as  may  be  judged  from  the  remains  of  their 
weapons,  implements,  etc.,  to  have  led  a  life  somewhat  of 
Esquimaux  type,  but  lower  by  the  want  of  domesticated 
animals.      The   districts   where   implements    of  the   rude 
primitive  Drift  type  are  found  are  limited  in  extent.     It  is 
to  ages  later  in  time  and  more  advanced  in  development, 
that  the   Neolithic   or  Polished   Stone   Period    belonged, 
when    the    manufacture    of  stone    instruments  was  much 
improved,  and  grinding  and  polishing  were  generally  intro- 
duced.    During  the  long  period  of  prevalence  of  this  state 
of  things,  Man  appears  to  have  spread  almost  over  the  whole 

*  Frere,  in  '  Archieologia,'  1800. 

^  J.  Evans,  in  '  Arohusologia,'  1861;    Lubbock,  'Frehistorio  Times,'  2nd 
ed.,  p.  335. 


60 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


1 1 


r,fi; 


habitable  earth.  The  examination  of  district  after  district 
of  the  world  has  now  all  but  e'^tablished  a  universal  rule 
that  the  Stone  Age  (bone  or  shell  being  the  occasional 
substitutes  for  stone)  underlies  the  Metal  Age  ever3'where. 
Even  the  districts  famed  in  history  as  seats  of  ancient 
civilization  show,  like  other  regions,  their  traces  of  a  yet 
more  archaic  Stone  Age.  Asia  Minor,  Egypt,  Palestine, 
India,  China,  furnish  evidence  from  actual  specimens, 
historical  mentions,  and  survivals,  which  demonstrate  the 
former  prevalence  of  conditions  of  society  which  have  their 
analogues  among  modern  savage  tribes.^  The  Duke  of 
Argyll,  in  his  *  Primeval  Man,'  while  admitting  the  Dri^* 
implements  as  having  been  the  ice  hatchets  and  rude  kni^  es 
of  low  tribes  of  men  inhabiting  Europe  toward  the  e  sd  of 
the  Glacial  Period,  concludes  thence  "  that  it  would  be  about 
as  safe  as  to  argue  from  these  implements  as'  to  the  con- 
dition of  Man  at  that  timo  in  the  countries  of  his  Primeval 
Home,  as  it  would  be  in  our  own  day  to  argue  from  the 
habits  and  arts  of  the  Eskimo  as  to  the  state  of  civilization 
in  London  or  in  Paris." ^  The  progress  of  Archaeology  for 
years  past,  however,  has  been  continually  cutting  away  the 
ground  on  which  such  an  argument  as  this  can  stand,  till 
now  it  is  all  but  utterly  driven  oif  the  field.  Where  now  is 
the  district  of  the  earth  that  can  be  pointed  to  as  the 
**  Primeval  Home  "  of  Man,  and  that  does  not  show  by 
rude  stone  implements  buried  in  its  soil  the  savage  condition 
of  its  former  inhabitants?  There  is  scarcely  a  known 
province  of  the  world  of  which  we  cannot  say  certainly, 
savages  once  dwelt  here,  and  if  in  such  a  case  an  ethno- 
logist asserts  that  these  savages  were  the  descendants  or 
successors  of  a  civilized  nation,  the  burden  of  proof  lies  on 
him.  Again,  the  Bronze  Age  and  the  Iron  Age  belong  in 
great  measure  to  history,  but  their  relation  to  the  Stone 
Age  proves  the  soundness  of  the  judgment  of  Lucretius, 
when,  attaching  experience  of  the  present  to  memory  and 

•  See  •  Early  History  of  Mtuikind,'  2n(i  ed.  chap.  TiiL 
"  Argyll,  'Primoval  Man,'  p.  1.9. 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OP    CULTURK 


6] 


inference  from  the  past,  he  propounded  what  is  now  a  tenet 
of  arehajology,  the  succession  of  the  Stone,  Bronze,  and  Iron 
Ages: 

"  Arma  antiqua  manua  ungues  dentesque  fuerunt, 
Et  lapides,  et  item  silvarum  fiagmina  rami 
•        •••••••• 

Posterius  ferri  vis  est  eerisque  reperta, 

Et  prior  seris  erat  quam  forri  cognitus  usus."  * 

Throughout  the  various  topics  of  Prehistoric  Archseolog}', 
the  force  and  convergence  of  its  testimony  upon  the  develop- 
ment of  culture  are  overpowering.  The  relics  discovered  in 
gravel-beds,  caves,  shell-mounds,  terramares,  lake-dwellings, 
earthworks,  the  results  of  an  exploration  of  the  superficial 
soil  in  many  countries,  the  comparison  of  geological  evi- 
dence, of  historical  documents,  of  modern  savage  life,  cor- 
roborate and  explain  one  another.  TJie  megalithic  struc- 
tures, menhirs,  cromlechs,  dolmens,  and  the  like,  only 
known  to  England,  France,  Algeria,  as  the  work  of  races  of 
the  mysterious  past,  have  been  kept  up  as  matters  of  modern 
construction  and  recognized  purpose  among  the  ruder  indi- 
genous tribes  of  India.  The  series  of  ancient  lake-settle- 
ments which  must  represent  so  many  centuries  of  successive 
population  fringing  the  shores  of  the  Swiss  lakes,  have  their 
surviving  representatives  among  rude  tribes  of  the  East 
Indies,  Africa,  and  South  America.  Outlj'ing  savages  are 
still  heaping  up  shell-mounds  like  those  of  far-past  Scandi- 
navian antiquity.  The  burial-mounds  still  to  be  seen  in 
civilized  countries  have  served  at  once  as  museums  of  early 
culture  and  as  proofs  of  its  savage  or  barbaric  type.  It  is 
enough,  without  entering  farther  here  into  subjects  fully 
discussed  in  modern  special  works,  to  claim  the  general 
support  given  to  the  development-theory  of  culture  by  Pre- 
historic Archa3ology.  It  was  with  a  true  appreciation  of 
the  bearings  of  this  science  that  one  of  its  founders,  the 
venerable  Professor  Sven  Nilsson,  declared  in  1843  in  the 

'  Lucret.  De  Rerum  Natura,  v.  1281. 


ill 


62 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


11 


'  :i 


1) 


Introduction  to  his  '  Primitive  Inhabitants  of  Scandinavia,' 
that  we  are  "  unable  properly  to  understand  the  significance 
of  the  antiquities  of  any  individual  country  without  at  the 
same  time  clearly  realizing  the  idea  that  they  are  the  frag- 
ments of  a  progressive  series  of  civilization,  and  that  the 
human  race  has  always  been,  and  still  is,  steadily  advance- 
ing  in  civihzation."  ^ 

Enquiry  into  tiie  origin  and  early  development  of  the 
material  arts,  as  judged  of  by  comparing  the  various  stages 
at  which  they  are  found  existing,  leads  to  a  corresponding 
result.  Not  to  take  this  argument  up  in  its  full  range,  a 
few  typical  details  may  serve  to  show  its  general  character. 
Amongst  the  various  stages  of  the  arts,  it  is  only  a  minority 
which  show  of  themselves  by  mere  inspection  whether  they 
are  in  the  line  of  progress  or  of  decline.  Most  such  facts 
may  be  compared  to  an  Indian's  canoe,  stem  and  stern  alike, 
so  that  one  cannot  tell  by  looking  at  it  which  way  it  is  set 
to  go.  But  there  are  some  which,  like  our  own  boats, 
distinctly  point  in  the  direction  of  their  actual  course. 
Such  facts  are  pointers  in  the  study  of  civilization,  and  in 
every  branch  of  the  enquiry  should  be  sought  out.  A  good 
example  of  these  pointer-facts  is  recorded  by  Mr.  Wallace. 
In  Celebes,  where  the  bamboo  houses  are  apt  to  lean  with 
the  prevalent  west  wind,  the  natives  have  fi  and  out  that  if 
they  fix  some  crooked  timbers  in  the  sides  of  the  house,  it 
will  not  fall.  They  choose  such  accordingly,  the  crookedest 
they  can  find,  but  they  do  rot  know  the  rationale  of  the 
contrivance,  and  have  not  hit  on  the  idea  that  straight  poles 
fixed  slanting  would  have  the  same  effect  in  making  tht 
structure  rigid.^  In  fact,  they  have  gone  halfway  toward 
inventing  what  builders  call  a  "  strut,"  but  have  stopped 

»  See  LycU,  'Antiquity  of  Man,'  3rd  ed,  1863;  Lubbock,  'Prehistoric 
Times,'  2nd  ed.  1870;  'Trans,  of  Congress  of  Prehistoric  Archt)eolon;y,* 
(Norwich,  1868);  Stevens,  'Flint  Chips,  etc.,'  1870;  Nilsson,  'Primitive 
Inhabitants  of  Scandinavia '  (ed.  by  Lubbock,  1868);  Fali'ouer,  '  Palneonto- 
logical  Memoirs,  etc.';  Lartet  and  Christy,  '  lleliquire  Aquitanicse'  (ed.  by 
T.  K.  Jones) ;  Keller,  '  Lnko  Dwellings '  (Tr.  and  Ed.  by  J.  E.  Lee),  etc.,  eta 

•  Wallace^  '  Indian  Archipelago,'  vol.  i.  p.  857. 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OP    CULTURE. 


6S 


short.  Now  the  mere  sight  of  such  a  house  would  show 
that  the  plan  is  not  a  remnant  of  higher  architecture,  but  a 
half-made  mvention.  This  is  a  fact  in  the  line  of  progress, 
but  not  of  decline.  I  have  mentioned  elsewhere  a  number 
of  similar  cases  ;  thus  the  adaptation  of  a  cord  to  the  fire- 
drill  is  obviously  an  improvement  on  the  simpler  instru- 
ment twirled  by  hand,  and  the  use  of  the  spindle  for  mak- 
ing thread  is  an  improvement  on  the  clumsier  art  of  hand- 
twisting  ;  1  but  to  reverse  this  position,  and  suppose  the 
hand-drill  to  have  come  into  use  by  leaving  off  the  use  of 
the  cord  of  the  cord-drill,  or  that  people  who  knew  the  use 
of  the  spindle  left  it  off  and  painfully  twisted  their  thread  by 
hand,  is  absurd.  Again,  the  appearance  of  an  art  in  a  par- 
ticular locality  where  it  is  hard  to  account  for  it  as  borrowed 
from  elsewhere,  and  especially  if  it  concerns  some  special 
native  product,  is  evidence  of  its  being  a  native  invention. 
Thus,  what  people  can  claim  the  invention  of  the  hammock, 
or  the  still  more  admirable  discovery  of  the  extraction  of 
the  wholesome  cassava  from  the  poisonous  manioc,  but  the 
natives  of  the  South  American  and  West  Indian  districts  to 
which  these  things  belong  ?  As  the  isolated  possession  of 
an  art  goes  to  prove  its  invention  where  it  is  found,  so  the 
absence  of  an  art  goes  to  prove  that  it  was  never  present. 
The  onus  probandi  is  on  the  other  side  ;  if  anyone  thinks 
that  the  East  African's  ancestors  had  the  Limp  and  the 
potter's  wheel,  and  that  the  North  American  Indians  once 
possessed  the  art  of  making  beer  from  their  maize  like  the 
Mexicans,  but  that  these  arts  have  been  lost,  at  any  rate  let 
him  show  cause  for  such  an  opinion.  I  need  not,  perhaps,  go 
so  far  as  a  facetious  ethnological  friend  of  mine,  who  argues 
that  the  existence  of  savage  tribes  who  do  not  kiss  their 
women  is  a  proof  of  primteval  barbarism,  for,  he  says,  if 
they  had  ever  known  the  practice  they  could  not  possibly 
have  forgotten  it.  Lastly  and  principally,  as  experience 
shows  us  that  arts  of  civilized  life  are  developed  through 
successive  stages  of  improvement,  we  may  assume  that  the 

'  '  Early  History  of  Mankind/  pp.  192,  243,  etc.,  etc. 


u  1  i 

in 


K' 


m 


mi  "' 


64 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


early  development  of  even  savage  arts  came  to  pass  in  a 
similar  way,  and  thus,  finding  various  stages  of  an  art 
among  the  lower  races,  we  may  arrange  these  stages  in  a 
series  probably  representing  their  actual  sequence  in 
history.  If  any  art  can  be  traced  back  among  savage  tribes 
to  a  rudimentary  state  in  which  its  invention  does  not  seem 
beyond  their  intellectual  condition,  and  especially  if  it  may 
be  produced  by  imitating  nature  or  following  nature's  direct 
suggestion,  there  is  fair  reason  to  suppose  the  very  origin  of 
the  art  to  have  been  reached. 

Professor  Nilsson,  looking  at  the  remarkable  similarity  of 
the  hunting  and  fishing  instruments  of  the  lower  races  of 
mankind,  considers  them  to  have  been  contrived  instinc- 
tivel)'  by  a  sort  of  natural  necessity.  As  an  example  he  takes 
the  bow  and  arrow.^  The  instance  seems  an  unfortunate 
one,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that  the  supposed  bow-and- 
arrow-making  instinct  fails  among  the  natives  of  Australia, 
to  whom  it  would  have  been  very  useful,  while  even  among 
the  Papuan  natives  of  the  New  Hebrides  there  is  reason  to 
think  it  not  original,  for  the  bow  is  called  there  fana,  pena, 
nfanga,  &c.,  names  apparently  taken  from  the  IMalay  yanaliy 
and  indicating  a  Malay  origin  for  the  instrument.  It  seems 
to  me  that  Dr.  Klemm,  in  his  dissertation  on  Implements 
and  Weapons,  and  Colonel  Lane  Fox,  in  his  lectures  on 
Primitive  Warfare,  take  a  more  instructive  line  in  tracing 
the  early  development  of  arts,  not  to  a  bUnd  instmct,  but  to 
a  selection,  imitation,  and  gradual  adaptation  and  improve- 
ment of  objects  and  oj)erations  which  Nature,  the  instructor 
of  primaeval  man,  sets  before  him.  Thus  Klemm  traces 
the  stages  by  which  progress  appears  to  have  been  made 
from  the  rough  stick  to  the  finished  spear  or  club,  from  the 
natural  sharp-edged  or  rounded  stone  to  the  artistically 
fashioned  celt,  spear-head,  or  hammer.^  Fox  traces  con- 
nexion through  the  various  types  of  weapons,  pointing  out 
how  a  form  once  arrived  at  is  repeated  in  various  sizes,  like 

*  Nilsson,  'Primitive  Inhabitants  of  Scandinavia,' p.  104. 

'^  Klemm,  'Allg.  Cultunviisscuscluirt,' part  ii.,  Werkyeuge  uud  AVulFt'iL 


I    M 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


65 


the  spear-head  and  arrow-point ;  how  in  rude  conditions  of 
the  arts  the  same  instrument  serves  different  purposes,  as 
where  the  Fuegians  used  their  arrow-heads  also  for  knives, 
and  Kafirs  carve  with  their  assagais,  till  separate  forms  are 
adopted  for  special  purposes  ;  and  how  in  the  history  of  the 
striking,  cutting,  and  piercing  instruments  used  by  man- 
kind, a  continuity  may  be  traced,  which  indicates  a  gradual 
progressive  development  from  the  rudest  beginnings  to  the 
most  advanced  improvements  of  modern  skill.  To  show 
how  far  the  early  development  of  warlike  arts  may  have 
been  due  to  man's  imitative  faculty,  he  points  out  the 
analogies  in  methods  of  warfare  among  animals  and  men, 
classifying  as  defensive  appliances  hides,  solid  plates, 
jointed  plates,  scales;  as  offensive  weapons,  the  piercing, 
striking,  serrated,  poisoned  kinds,  &c. ;  and  under  the  head 
of  stratagems,  Hight,  concealment,  leaders,  outposts,  war- 
cries,  and  so  forth.^ 

The  manufacture  of  stone  implements  is  now  almost 
perfectly  understood  by  archseologists.  The  processes  used 
by  modern  savages  have  been  observed  and  imitated.  Mr. 
John  Evans,  for  instance,  by  blows  with  a  pebble,  pressure 
with  a  piece  of  stag's  horn,  sawing  with  a  flint-flake,  boring 
with  a  stick  and  sand,  and  grinding  on  a  stone  surface, 
succeeds  in  reproducing  all  but  the  finest  kinds  of  stone 
implements.^  On  thorough  knowledge  we  are  now  able  to 
refer  in  great  measure  the  remarkable  similarities  of  the 
stone  scrapers,  flake-knives,  hatchets,  spear-  and  arrow- 
heads, &c.,  as  found  in  distant  times  and  regions,  to  the 
similarity  of  natural  models,  of  materials,  and  of  require- 
ments which  belong  to  savage  life.  The  history  of  the 
Stone  Age  is  clearly  seen  to  be  one  of  development.  Begin- 
ning with   the  natural   sharp    stone,  the  transition  to  the 


*  Lane  Fox,  'Lecfrires  on  Primitive  Warfare,'  Joarn.  United  Service  Inst. 

1867—9. 

2  Evans  in  '  Trans,  of  Congress  of  Prehistoric  Archreology'  (Norwich,  1868), 
p.  191  ;  Riiu  in  '  Smithsonian  Reports,'  1868  ;  Sir  E.  Belcher  in  Tr.  Eth.  Son. 
vol.  i.  p.  129. 

VOL.   I.  W 


i 


Mi 


'1 


^n. 


m  'I 


H    II 


if-   i 


66 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTURE. 


rudest  artificially  shaped  stone  implement  id  imperceptibly 
gradual,  and  onward  from  this  rude  stage  much  indepen- 
dent progress  in  different  directions  is  to  be  traced,  and  the 
manufacture  at  last  arrives  at  admirable  artistic  perfection, 
by  the  time  that  the  introduction  of  metal  is  superseding  it. 
So  with  other  implements  and  fabrics,  of  which  the  stages 
are  known  through  their  whole  course  of  development  from 
the  merest  nature  to  the  fullest  art.  The  club  is  traced 
from  the  rudest  natural  bludgeon  up  to  the  weapon  of 
finished  shape  and  carving.  Pebbles  held  in  the  hand  to 
hammer  with,  and  cutting-instruments  of  stone  shaped  or 
left  smooth  at  one  end  to  be  held  in  the  hand,  may  be  seen 
in  museums,  hinting  that  the  important  art  of  fixing  instru- 
ments in  handles  was  the  result  of  invention,  not  of  instinct. 
The  stone  hatchet,,  used  as  a  weapon,  passes  into  the  battle- 
axe.  The  spear,  a  pointed  stick  or  pole,  has  its  point 
hardened  in  the  fire,  and  a  further  improvement  is  to  fix  on 
a  sharp  point  of  horn,  bone,  or  chipped  stone.  Stones  are 
flung  by  hand,  and  then  by  the  sling,  a  contrivance  widely 
but  not  universally  known  among  savage  tribes.  From  first 
to  last  in  the  history  of  war  the  spear  or  lance  is  grasped  as 
a  thrusting  weapon.  Its  use  as  a  missile  no  doubt  began 
as  early,  but  it  has  hardly  survived  so  far  in  civilization. 
Thus  used,  it  is  most  often  thrown  by  the  unaided  arm,  but 
a  sling  for  the  purpose  is  known  to  various  savage  tribes. 
The  short  cord  with  an  eye  used  in  the  New  Hebrides,  and 
called  a  "becket"  by  Captain  Cook,  and  a  whip-like  in- 
strument noticed  in  New  Zealand,  are  used  for  spear- 
throwing.  But  the  more  usual  instrument  is  a  wooden 
handle,  a  foot  or  two  long.  This  spear-thrower  is  known 
across  the  high  northern  districts  of  North  America,  among 
some  tribes  of  South  America,  and  among  the  Australians. 
These  latter,  it  has  been  asserted,  could  not  have  invented 
it  in  their  present  state  of  barbarism.  But  the  remarkable 
feature  of  the  matter  is  that  the  spear-thrower  belongs  espe- 
cially to  savagery,  and  not  to  civilization.  Among  the  higher 
nations  the  nearest  approach  to  it  seems  to  have  been  the 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


67 


: 


•i 


classic  amentum,  apparently  a  thong  attached  to  the  middle 
of  the  javelin  to  throw  it  with.  The  highest  people  known 
to  have  used  the  spear-thrower  proper  are  the  Aztecs.  Its 
existence  among  them  is  vouched  for  by  representations  in 
the  Mexican  mythological  pictures,  by  its  name  "  atlatl," 
and  by  a  beautifully  artistic  specimen  of  the  thing  itself  in 
the  Christy  Museum ;  but  we  do  not  hear  of  it  as  in 
practical  use  at  the  Conquest,  when  it  had  apparently  fallen 
into  survival.  In  fact  the  history  of  the  instrument  seems 
in  absolute  opposition  to  the  degradation-theory,  represent- 
ing as  it  does  an  invention  belonging  to  savage  culture,  and 
scarcely  able  to  suivive  beyond.  Nearly  the  same  may  be 
said  of  the  blow-tube,  which  as  a  serious  weapon  scarcely 
ranges  above  rude  tribes  of  the  East  Indies  and  South 
America,  though  kept  up  in  sport  at  higher  levels.  The 
Australian  boomerang  has  been  claimed  as  derived  from 
some  hypothetical  high  culture,  whereas  the  transition- 
stages  through  which  it  is  conxiected  with  the  club  are  to  be 
observed  in  its  own  country,  while  no  civilized  race  possesses 
the  weapon. 

The  use  of  an  elastic  switch  to  fillip  small  missiles  with, 
and  the  remarkable  elastic  darts  of  the  Pelew  Islands,  bent 
and  made  to  fly  by  their  own  spring,  indicate  inventions 
which  may  have  led  to  that  of  the  bow,  while  the  arrow  is  a 
miniature  form  of  the  javelin.  The  practice  of  poisoning 
arrows,  after  the  manner  of  stings  and  serpents'  fangs,  is  no 
civilized  device,  but  a  characteristic  of  lower  life,  which  is 
generally  discarded  even  at  the  barbaric  stage.  The  art  of 
narcotizing  fish,  remembered  but  not  approved  by  high 
civilization,  belongs  to  many  savage  tribes,  who  might 
easily  discover  it  in  any  forest  pool  where  a  suitable  plant 
had  fallen  in.  The  art  of  setting  fences  to  catch  fish  at  the 
ebb  of  the  tide,  so  common  among  the  lower  races,  is  a 
simple  device  for  assisting  nature  quite  likely  to  occur  to 
the  savage,  in  whom  sharp  hunger  is  no  mean  ally  of  dull 
wit.     Thus  it  is  with   other  arts.     Fire-making,  cooking, 

pottery,  the  textile  arts,  are  to  be  traced  along  lines  of 

f2 


€8 


THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  CULTURE. 


*    !ii 


gradual  improvement.^  Music  begins  with  the  rattle  and 
the  drum,  which  in  one  way  or  another  hold  their  places 
from  end  to  end  of  civilization,  while  pipes  and  stringed 
instruments  represent  an  advanced  musical  art  which  is  still 
developing.  So  with  architecture  and  agriculture.  Com- 
plex, elaborate,  and  highly-reasoned  as  are  the  upper  stages 
of  these  arts,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  their  lower  stages 
begin  with  mere  direct  imitation  of  nature,  copying  the 
shelters  which  nature  provides,  and  the  propagation  of 
plants  which  nature  performs.  Without  enumerating  to 
the  same  purpose  the  remaining  industries  of  savage  hfe,  it 
may  be  said  generally  that  their  facts  resist  rather  than 
require  a  theory  of  degradation  from  higher  culture.  They 
agree  with,  and  often  necessitate,  the  same  view  of  develop- 
ment which  we  know  bj'  experience  to  account  for  the  origin 
and  progress  of  the  arts  among  ourselves. 

In  the  various  branches  of  the  problem  which  will  hence- 
forward occupy  our  attention,  that  of  determining  the 
relation  of  the  mental  condition  of  savages  to  that  of  civi- 
lized men,  it  is  an  excellent  guide  and  safeguard  to  keep 
before  our  minds  the  theory  of  development  in  the  material 
arts.  Throughout  all  the  manifestations  of  the  human 
intellect,  facts  will  be  found  to  fall  into  their  places  on  the 
same  general  lines  of  evolution.  The  notion  of  the  intel- 
lectual state  of  savages  as  resulting  from  decay  of  previous 
high  knowledge,  seems  to  have  as  little  evidence  in  its 
favour  as  that  stone  celts  are  the  degenerate  successors  of 
Sheffield  axes,  or  earthen  grave-mounds  degraded  copies  of 
Egyptian  pyramids.  The  study  of  savage  and  civilized  life 
alike  avail  us  to  trace  in  the  early  history  of  the  human 
intellect,  not  gifts  of  transcendental  wisdom,  but  rude 
shrewd  sense  taking  up  the  facts  of  common  life  and 
shaping  from  them  schemes  of  primitive  philosophy.  It 
will  be  seen  again  and  again,  by  examining  such  topics  as 
language,  mythology,  custom,  religion,  that  savage  opinion 
is  in  a  more  or  less  rudimentary  state,  while  the  civilized 

'  See  details  in  '  Early  History  of  Mankind,'  chap,  vii.— ix. 


i 


THE    DEVELOPMENT    OF    CULTL'RE. 


G9 


mind  still  bearti  vestiges,  neither  few  nor  slight,  of  a  past 
condition  from  which  savages  represent  the  least,  and 
civilized  men  the  greatest  advance.  Throughout  the  whole 
vast  range  of  the  history  of  human  thouglit  and  habit,  while 
civilization  has  to  contend  not  onlv  with  survival  from 
lower  levels,  but  also  with  degeneration  within  its  own 
borders,  it  yet  proves  capable  of  overcoming  both  and 
taking  its  own  course.  History  within  its  proper  field,  and 
ethnography  over  a  wider  range,  combine  to  show  that  the 
institutions  which  can  best  hold  their  own  in  the  world 
gradually  supersede  the  less  fit  ones,  and  that  this  in- 
cessant conflict  determines  the  general  resultant  course  of 
culture.  I  will  venture  to  set  forth  in  mythic  fashion  how 
progress,  aberration,  and  retrogression  in  the  general  course 
of  culture  contrast  themselves  in  my  own  mind.  We  may 
fancy  ourselves  looking  on  Civilization,  as  in  personal 
figure  she  traverses  the  world ;  we  see  her  lingering  or 
resting  by  the  way,  and  often  deviating  into  paths  that 
bring  her  toiling  back  to  where  she  had  passed  by  long 
ago  ;  but,  direct  or  devious,  her  path  lies  forward,  and  if 
now  and  then  she  tries  a  few  backward  steps,  her  walk  soon 
falls  into  a  helpless  stumbling.  It  is  not  according  to  her 
nature,  her  feet  were  not  made  to  plant  uncertain  steps 
behind  her,  for  both  in  her  forward  view  and  in  her  onward 
gait  she  is  of  truly  human  type. 


Wr 


■■^texaatmcmtx-.M^.' 


CHAPTER   III. 


SURVIVAL  IN  CULTURE. 


Snrvival  and  Superstition — Children's  games — Games  of  chance — Traditional 
sayings— Nursery  poems — Proverbs— Riddles— Significance  and  survival 
in  Customs :  sneezing-formula,  rite  of  foundation-sacrifice,  prejudice 
against  saving  a  drowning  man. 


I.  '    -.m 


H 


t; 


.'■     if ' 


I  t' 


When  a  custom,  an  art,  or  an  opinion  is  fairly  started  in 
the  world,  disturbing  influences  may  long  affect  it  so 
slightly  that  it  may  keep  its  course  from  generation  to 
generation,  as  a  stream  once  settled  in  its  bed  will  flow  on 
for  ages.  This  is  mere  permanence  of  culture  ;  and  t'le 
si^ecial  wonder  about  it  is  that  the  change  and  revolution 
of  human  affairs  should  have  left  so  many  of  its  feeblest 
rivulets  to  run  so  long.  On  the  Tatar  steppes,  six 
hundred  years  ago,  it  was  an  offence  to  tread  on  the  thres- 
hold or  touch  the  ropes  in  entering  a  tent,  and  so  it  appears 
to  be  still.^  Eighteen  centuries  ago  Ovid  mentions  the  vulgar 
Roman  objection  to  marriages  in  May,  which  he  not  un- 
reasonably explains  by  the  occurrence  in  that  month  of  the 
funeral  rites  of  the  Lemuralia  : — 

**  Nee  vidua?  tredis  eadem,  nee  virginis  apta 
Tempora.     Quse  nupsit,  non  diuturna  fuit. 
Hac  quoque  de  causa,  si  te  proverbia  tangunt, 
Mense  malas  Maio  nubero  volguB  ait."  * 

The  saying  that  marriages  in  May  are  unlucky  survives 

*  Will,  de  Rubruquis  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  pp.  46,  67,  132;  Michie, 
'Sibeiian  Overland  Route,'  p.  96. 

3  Ovid.  Fast.  v.  487.  For  moilern  Italy  and  France,  see  Ed^lestane  da 
Mdril,  '  fitudes  d'  ArcWol.*  p.  121. 


SURVIVAL     IN    CULTURE. 


to  this  day  in  England,  a  striking  exiiniple  how  an  idea, 
the  meaning  of  which  has  perished  for  ages,  may  continue 
to  exist  simply  because  it  has  existed. 

Now  there  are  thousands  of  cases  of  this  kind  which 
have  become,  so  to  speak,  landmarks  in  the  course  of 
culture.  When  in  the  process  of  time  there  has  come 
general  change  in  the  condition  of  a  r)eople,  it  is  usual, 
notwithstanding,  to  find  much  that  i:;fi  iiifostly  had  not  its 
origin  in  the  new  state  of  things,  but  1  as  simply  lasted  on 
into  it.  On  the  strength  of  these  survivals,  it  bjcoinea 
possible  to  declare  that  the  civilization  of  the  people  they 
are  observed  among  must  have  been  derived  from  an  earlier 
state,  in  which  the  proper  homo  and  meaning  of  these 
things  are  to  be  found;  and  thus  collections  of  such  facts 
are  to  be  worked  as  mines  of  historic  knowledge.  In  deal- 
ing with  such  materials,  experience  of  what  actually 
happens  is  the  main  guide,  and  direct  history  has  to  teach 
us,  first  and  foremost,  how  old  habits  hold  their  ground  in 
the  midst  of  a  new  culture  which  certainl}'  would  never 
have  brought  them  in,  but  on  the  contrary  presses  hard  to 
thrust  them  out.  What  this  direct  information  is  like,  a 
single  example  may  show.  The  Dayaks  of  Borneo  were 
not  accustomed  to  chop  wood,  as  we  do,  b}'  notching  out 
V-shaped  cuts.  Accordingly,  when  the  white  man  intrndcid 
iimoiig  them  with  this  among  other  novelties,  they  marked 
their  disgust  at  the  innovation  by  levying  a  fine  on  any  of 
their  own  people  v,'ho  should  be  cau^^lit  chopping  in  the 
European  fashion  ;  yet  so  well  aware  were  the  native  wood- 
cutters that  the  white  man's  pkm  was  an  improvement  on 
their  own,  that  they  would  use  it  surreptitiously  when  they 
could  trust  one  another  not  to  tell.^  The  account  is. 
twenty  years  old,  and  ver}'  likely  the  foreign  chop  may  have 
ceased  to  be  an  offence  against  Dayak  conservatism,  but  its 
prohibition  was  a  striking  instance  of  survival  by  ancestral 
authority  in  the  very  teeth  of  common  sense.  Such  a  pro- 
ceed""'';' as    this    would   be  usually,   and    not    improperly,, 

'  '  Jimrn.  lud  Arcliip.'  (ed.  by  J.  R.  Loymi),  vol.  ii.  p.  liv. 


H 


;  r 


t-  :^) 


7-> 

•   Ml 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTIIRK. 


described  as  a  superstition  ;  and,  indeed,  this  name  wcml  \ 
be  given  t.o  a  large  proportion  of  survivals  generally.  The 
very  word  "  superstition,"  in  what  is  perhaps  its  original 
sense  of  a  **  standing  over  "  from  old  times,  itself  expresses 
the  notion  of  survival.  But  the  term  superstition  now 
implies  a  reproach,  and  though  this  reproach  may  be  often 
cast  deservedly  on  fragments  of  a  dead  lower  culture  em- 
bedded in  a  living  higher  one,  yet  in  many  cases  it  would 
be  harsh,  and  even  untrue.  For  the  ethnograplier's  pur- 
pose, at  any  rate,  it  is  desirable  to  introduce  such  a  term 
as  "  survival,"  simply  to  denote  the  historical  fact  which 
the  word  "  superstition "  is  now  spoiled  for  expressing. 
Moreover,  there  have  to  be  included  as  partial  survivals 
Ihe  mass  of  cases  where  enough  of  the  old  habit  is  kept  up 
for  its  origin  to  be  recognizable,  though  in  taking  a  new 
'form  it  has  been  so  adapted  to  new  circumstances  as  still  to 
hold  its  place  on  its  own  merits. 

Thus  it  would  be  seldom  reasonable  to  call  the  children's 
games  of  modern  Europe  superstitions,  though  many  of 
them  are  survivals,  and  indeed  remarkable  ones.  If  the 
games  of  children  and  of  grown-up  people  be  examined 
with  an  eye  to  ethnological  lessons  to  be  gained  from  them, 
one  of  the  first  things  that  strikes  us  is  how  many  of  them 
are  only  sportive  imitations  of  the  serious  business  of  life. 
As  children  in  modern  civilized  times  play  at  dining  and 
driving  horses  and  going  to  church,  so  a  main  amusement 
of  savage  cliildren  is  to  imitate  the  occupations  which  they 
will  carry  on  in  earnest  a  few  years  later,  aud  thus  their 
games  are  in  fact  their  lessons.  The  Esipiimaux  children's 
sports  are  shooting  with  a  tiny  bow  and  arrow  at  a  mark, 
and  building  little  snow-huts,  which  they  light  up  with 
scraps  of  lamp-wick  begged  from  their  mothers.^  Minia- 
ture boomerangs  and  spears  are  among  the  toys  of  Australian 
children;  anc'  even  as  the  fathers  keep  up  the  extremely 
primitive  custom  of  getting  themselves  wives  by  carrying 
.them  off  by  violence  from  other  tribes,  so  playing  at  such 

'  Kleram,  '  Cultur-Geschichte,'  vol  ii.  p.  '209. 


,r1»  .--^ 


SURVIVAL    Ix\    CULTURE. 


73 


Sabiue  marriage  has  boeii  noticed  as  one  of  the   regular 
games  of  the  little  native  boys  and  girls.^     Now  it  is  quite 
a  usual  thing  in  the  world  for  a  game  to  outlive  the  serious 
practice  of  whicli  it  is  an  imitation.     The  bow  and  arrow  is 
H  conspicuous  instance.     Ancient  and  wide-spread  in  savage 
culture,   we    trace    this   instrument   through   barbaric    and 
classic  life  and  onward  to  a  high  mediaeval  level.     But  now, 
when  we  look  on  at  an  archery  meeting,  or  go  by  country 
huips  at  the  season  when  toy  bows  and  arrows  are  "  in  " 
among   the    children,  we  see,  reduced  to  a  mere  sportive 
survival,  the   ancient  weapon  which   among  a  few  savage 
tribes  still  keeps  its  deadly  jilace  in  the  hunt  and  the  battle. 
The  cross-bow,  a  comparatively  late  and  local  improvement 
on  the  long-bow,  has  disappeared  yet  more  utterly  from 
practical  use ;  but  as  a  toy  it  is  in  full  European  service, 
and  likely  to  remain  so.     For  antiquity  and  wide  diffusion 
in  the  world,  through  savage  up  to  classic  and  medieval 
times,  the  sling  ranks  with  the  bow  and  arrow.     But  in  the 
middle  ages  it  fell  out  of  use  as  a  practical  weapon,  and  it 
was  all  in  vain  that  the  15th  century  poet  commended  the 
art  of  slinging  among  the  exercises  of  a  good  soldier  : — 

"  Use  eek  the  cast  of  stone,  with  slj'nge  or  honde : 
It  t'ulleth  ofte,  yf  other  shot  thero  uone  ia, 
Men  huruoytied  in  ssteel  may  not  withstonde, 
Tho  multitude  and  mighty  cast  of  stonys; 
And  stonys  in  eflbcte,  arc  every  where, 
And  slynges  are  not  noyous  for  to  beare."  * 

Perhaps  as  serious  a  use  of  the  sling  as  can  now  be  pointed 
out  within  the  limits  of  civilization  is  among  the  herdsmen 
of  Spanish  America,  who  sling  so  cleverly  that  the  saying  is 
they  can  hit  a  beast  on  either  horn  and  turn  him  which 
way  they  will.  But  the  use  of  the  rude  old  weapon  is 
especially  kept  up  by  boys  at  play,  who  are  here  again  the 
representatives  of  remotely  ancient  culture, 

»  Oldfieldin  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc' vol.  iii.  p.  266;  Dumont  d'UrvUlo,  'Voy.  dt 
r Astrolabe,'  vol  j.  p.  411. 
*  Stnitt,  '  v^|)f)rts  ami  Pustiraes,'  book  ii.  chap,  ii 


tv 


W   '' 


i  J 


74 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


As  games  thus  keep  up  the  record  of  primitive  warlike 
arts,  so  they  reproduce,  in  what  are  at  once  sports  and 
little  children's  lessons,  early  stages  in  the  history  of  child- 
like tribes  of  mankind.  English  children  delighting  in  the 
imitations  of  cries  of  animals  and  so  forth,  and  New  Zea- 
landers  playing  their  favourite  game  of  imitating  in  chorus 
the  saw  hissing,  the  adze  chipping,  the  musket  roaring,  and 
the  other  instruments  making  their  proper  noises,  are 
alike  showing  at  its  source  the  imitative  element  so  import- 
ant in  the  formation  of  language.^  When  we  look  into  the 
eiiiiy  development  of  the  art  of  counting,  and  see  the 
evidence  of  tribe  after  tribe  having  obtained  numerals 
through  the  primitive  stage  of  counting  on  their  lingers,  we 
find  a  certain  ethnographic  interest  in  the  games  wliicli 
teach  this  earliest  numeration.  The  New  Zealand  game  of 
"ti"  is  described  as  played  by  counting  on  the  fingers,  a 
number  being  called  by  one  player,  and  he  having  instantly 
to  touch  the  proper  finger ;  while  in  the  Sanioan  game  one 
player  holds  out  so  many  fingers,  and  his  opponent  must  do 
the  same  instantly  or  lose  a  point.^  These  may  be  native 
Polynesian  games,  or  they  may  be  our  own  children's 
games  borrowed.  In  the  English  nursery  the  child  learns 
to  say  how  many  fmgers  the  nurse  shows,  and  tlie  appointed 
formula  of  the  game  h  "Back,  Buck,  how  many  Jiorns  do  I 
hold  up  ?  "  The  game  of  one  holding  up  fingers  and  tlie 
others  holding  up  fingers  to  match  is  mentioned  in  Strutt. 
We  may  see  small  schoolboys  in  the  lanes  playing  at  the 
guessing-game,  where  one  gets  on  another's  back  and  holds 
up  fingers,  the  other  must  guess  how  many.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  notice  the  wide  distribution  and  long  permanence  of 
these  trifles  in  history  when  we  read  the  following  passage 
from  Petronius  Arbiter,  written  in  the  time  of  Nero  : — 
**  Trimalchio,  not  to  seem  moved  by  the  loss,  kissed  the 

'  Pohiclv,  •  New  Zcaliinders,'  vol.  ii.  p.  171. 

»  Polaok,  il)i(].  ;  Wilkes,  'U.S.  Kxp.'  vol.  i.  p.  194.  See  tho  account  of 
tlic  frniiie  of  liiigi  in  Mnrinor,  'Tuuj^a  Is.'  vol.  ii.  s.  339;  and  Yato,  'New 
Zealand,'  p.  113. 


SUUVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


i9 


hoy  and  bade  him  get  up  on  his  back.  Without  delay  the 
boy  climbed  on  horseback  on  him,  and  slapped  him  on  the 
shoulders  with  his  hand,  laughing  and  calling  out  "bucca, 
bucca,  quot  sunt  hie  ?  "^  The  simple  counting-games 
played  with  the  fingers  must  not  be  confounded  with  the 
addition-game,  where  each  player  throws  out  a  hand,  and 
the  sum  of  all  the  fingors  shown  has  to  be  called,  the 
successful  caller  scoring  a  point ;  practically  each  calls  the 
total  before  he  sees  his  adversary's  hand,  so  that  the  skill 
lies  especially  in  shrewd  guessing.  This  game  affords  end- 
less amusement  to  China,  where  it  is  called  "tsoey-moey," 
and  to  Southern  Europe,  where  it  is  known  in  Italian  as 
"morra,"  and  in  French  as  "  mourre."  So  peculiar  a 
game  would  hardly  have  been  invented  twice  over  in  Eu- 
roj)e  and  Asia,  but  it  is  hard  to  guess  whether  the  Chinese 
learnt  it  from  the  West,  or  whether  it  belongs  to  the 
remarkable  list  of  clever  inventions  which  Europe  has 
borrowed  from  China.  The  ancient  Egyptians,  as  their 
sculptures  ohow,  used  to  play  at  some  kind  of  finger-game, 
and  the  Romans  had  their  finger-flaslsing,  "micare  digitis," 
at  which  butchers  used  to  gamble  with  their  customers  for 
bits  of  meat.  It  is  not  clear  whether  these  were  morra  or 
some  other  games." 

When  Scotch  lads,  playing  at  tlie  game  of  **  tappie- 
tousie,"  ;ake  one  another  by  the  forelock  aud  say,  "  Will  ye 
be  my  man  ?  "^  they  know  nothing  of  the  old  symbolic 
manner  of  receiving  a  bondman  which  they  are  keeping  up 
in  survival.  The  wooden  drill  for  making  fire  by  friction, 
which  so  many  rude  or  ancient  races  are  known  to  have 
used  as  their  common  household  instrument,  and  whicli 
lasts  on  among  th'^  modern  Hindus  as  the  time-honoured 
sacred  means  of  lighting  the  pure  sacrificial  flame,  has  been 


'  Petron.  Arbitri  Satii-se  rec.  BUcliler,  p.  64  (otlier  readings  are  buccce  or 
bucco). 

*  Compare  Davis,  'Chinese,'  vol.  i.  p.  317  ;  Wilkinson,  Ancient  Egyptians, 
vol.  i.  p.  188  ;  Facciolati,  Lexicon,  a.  v.  'micare'  ;  etc. 

*  Janiieson,  '  Diet,  of  Scottish  Laiig.'  s.  v. 


vl 


76 


SURVIVAL    IN    CITLTURF. 


I:  i 


.-■    \ 


found  surviving  in  Switzerland  as  a  toy  among  the  chll  Iren, 
who  made  fire  with  it  in  sport,  much  as  Esquimaux  would 
have  done  in  earnest.'  In  Gothland  it  is  on  record  that  tlie 
ancient  sacrifice  of  the  wild  boar  has  actually  been  carried 
on  into  modern  time  in  sportive  imitation,  by  lads  in  mas- 
querading clothes  with  their  faces  blackened  and  painted, 
while  the  victim  was  personated  by  a  boy  rolled  up  in  furs 
and  placed  upon  a  seat,  with  a  tuft  of  pointed  straws  in  his 
mouth  to  imitate  the  bristles  of  the  boar.^  One  innocent 
little  child's  sport  of  our  own  time  is  strangely  mixed  up 
with  i\\  iiL^ly  story  of  about  a  thousand  years  ago.  The 
game  i^n  question  is  thus  pla3^ed  in  France  : — The  children 
stand  in  a  ring,  one  liglits  a  spill  of  paper  and  passes  it  on 
\o  Jhe  xwKi  saying,  "petit  bonhomme  vit  encore,"  and  so 
0)1  jiiu  Uie  ring,  each  saying  the  words  and  passing  on 
he  •:;(,.  !fi  fi<?  quickly  as  may  bo,  for  the  ore  in  whose  liands 
.  ne  spii]  iL^es  out  has  to  pay  a  forfeit,  a'ld  it  is  then  pro- 
claimed that  "  petit  bonhomme  eat  niort."  Grimm  men- 
tions a  similar  game  in  Germany,  played  with  a  burning 
stick,  and  Halliwell  gives  the  nursery  rhyme  which  is  said 
with  it  when  it  is  played  n\  Engl;i,nd  : — 

"  Jack's  alive  and  in  very  good  health, 
If  he  dies  in  your  hand  you  niust  look  to  yourself." 

Now,  as  all  readers  of  Church  history  know,  it  used  to  be  a 
favourite  engine  of  controversy  for  the  adherents  of  an  esta- 
blished faitli  to  acc;ise  heretical  sects  of  celebrating  hideous 
orgies  as  the  mysteries  of  their  I'eligion.  The  Pagans  told 
these  stories  "f  the  Jews,  i]:"^  JeT.^'  told  them  of  the 
Christians,  and  Christians  themselves  reach'  d  v.  bad  emi- 
nence in  the  art  of  slanderinj],  religious  opponents  whose 
moral  life  often  seems  in  fact  to  have  been  exceptionally 
pure.  The  ManichjBans  were  an  especial  mark  for  such 
aspersions,  which  were  passed  on  to  a  sect  considered  as 
their  successors — the  Paulicians,  whose  name  reappears  in 

'  *  Enrly  History  of  Mankind,'  p.  ;J44,  etc.  ;   GrimTn,   'Deutsche  Myth., 
p.  573.  2  Gi.iinin,  ibid.,  p.  1200. 


% 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


77 


the  middle  ages,  in  connexion  with  the  Cathari.  To  tlh  e 
latter,  aj^parently  from  an  expression  in  one  of  their  religious 
formulas,  was  given  the  name  of  Boni  Homines,  which 
hecame  a  recognized  term  for  the  Albigenses.  It  is  clear 
that  the  earlj^  Paulicians  excited  the  anger  of  the  orthodox 
by  objecting  to  sacred  images,  and  calling  those  who  vene- 
rated them  idolaters ;  and  about  a.d.  700,  John  of  Osun, 
Patriarch  of  Armenia,  wrote  a  diatribe  against  the  sect, 
urging  accusations  of  the  regular  anti-Manichajan  type,  but 
witli  a  i)eculiar  feature  which  brings  his  statement  into  the 
present  singular  connexion.  He  declares  that  they  blas- 
phemously call  the  orthodox  '*  image- worshippers  ;  "  that 
they  themselves  worsliip  the  sun ;  that,  moreover,  they  mix 
wheaten  flour  with  the  blood  of  infants  and  therewith  cele- 
brate their  communion,  and  "  when  they  have  slain  by  the 
worst  of  deaths  a  boy,  tlie  first-born  of  his  motlier,  thrown 
from  hand  to  hand  among  them  by  turns,  they  venerate 
him  in  wliose  hand  the  child  expires,  as  having  attained  to 
the  first  dignity  of  the  sect."  To  explain  the  correspond- 
ence of  these  atrocious  details  with  the  nurser}'  sport,  it  is 
perliaps  the  most  likely  supposition,  not  that  the  game  of 
"  Petit  Bonhomme  "  keeps  up  a  recollection  of  a  legend  of 
the  Boni  Homines,  but  that  the  game  was  known  to  the 
children  of  the  eighth  century  much  as  it  is  now,  and  that 
the  Armenian  Patriarch  simply  accused  the  Paulicians  of 
playing  at  it  with  live  babes.^ 

1  Halliwell,  'Popular  Rhymes,'  p.  112;  Grimm,  '  D.  M.'p.  812.  Bustiaii, 
'Mensch,' vol.  iii.  p.  lOG.  Jolianiiis  Philosophi  Oznieiusia  Opera  (Auclicr), 
Venice,  1834,  ]).  78 — 89.  '  Iiii'antium  saiiguiiii  similiiin  cDiiiiiiisceiitos  ilhi- 
gitimam  coiiimiiiiioiiem  deglutiunt  ;  quo  jiacto  poiconini  suds  f(Ltu>  iiu- 
niaiiiter  vesceutiuni  exsuperant  edacitnCem.  Qiii(|Uo  illoiuiii  cadavora  supur 
tecti  culiiK'ii  eulaiites,  ac  sui'sum  oculis  in  >  uluni  di'fixi.s  re.-|iiciiintos,  juraut 
aiieno  vcrbo  ac  scnsu  :  Ahissimns  novit.  Soloin  vero  iluprecari  vohsiite.s, 
ajunt  :  S' ticitle,  Luviculc  ;  atiiue  uereos,  vagnsiiue  diemones  clam  invorunt, 
juxta  Maniehn3oruni  Himonisfpio  iucantaloris  crrores.  Similiter  et  primum 
l)arientis  loBiiiiniB  jiuerum  de  manu  in  mauum  inter  eos  invicem  proji'ctuni, 
quum  pessima  niorte  occideiint,  ilium-,  in  cujus  manu  exspiraverit  puer,  ad 
primam  sectie  dignitatem  provectum  venmantur  ;  atque  per  utrius(iue  nomon 
audent  insane  jurare  ;  Juro,  diciuii,  per  uniyenitum  filium:  et  itenim  : 
Tcslcm  haheo  tibi  gloriam  ejus,  m  cujus  maiium  uniyenitus  filiua  apiritum 


K1 


I    4' 


78 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


It  ma}'  be  possible  to  trace  another  interesting  group  ol 
sports  as  survivals  from  a  branch  of  savage  philosopliy,  once 
of  high  rank  though  now  fallen  into  merited  decay.  Games 
of  chance  correspond  so  closely  with  arts  of  divination 
belonging  already  to  savage  culture,  that  there  is  force  in 
applying  to  several  such  games  the  rule  that  the  serioiia 
practice  comes  first,  and  in  time  may  dwindle  to  the  sportive 
survival.  To  a  modern  educated  man,  drawing  lots  or 
tossing  up  a  coin  is  an  appeal  to  chance,  that  is,  to  igno- 
rance ;  it  is  committing  the  decision  of  a  question  to  a 
mechanical  process,  itself  in  no  way  unnatural  or  even 
extraordinary,  but  merely  so  difficult  to  follow  that  no  one 
can  say  beforehand  what  will  come  of  it.  But  we  also  know 
that  this  scientific  doctrine  of  chance  is  not  that  of  early 
civilization,  which  has  little  in  common  with  the  mathema- 
tician's theory  of  probabilities,  but  much  in  common  with 
such  sacred  divination  as  the  choice  of  Matthias  by  lot  as 
a  twelfth  apostle,  or,  in  a  later  age,  the  Moravian  Brethren's 
rite  of  choosing  wives  for  their  young  men  by  casting  lots 
with  prayer.  It  was  to  no  blind  chance  that  the  Maoris 
looked  when  they  divined  by  throwing  up  lots  to  find  a 
thief  among  a  suspected  company  ;^  or  the  Guinea  negroes 
when  they  went  to  the  fetish-priest,  who  shuffled  his  bundle 
of  little  strips  of  leather  and  gave  his  sacred  omen.^  The 
crowd  with  uplifted  hands  pray  to  the  gods,  when  the  heroes 
cast  lots  in  the  cap  of  Atreides  Agamemnon,  to  know  who 
shall  go  forth  to  do  battle  with  Hektor  and  help  the  well- 
greaved  Greeks.^  With  prayer  to  the  gods,  and  looking  up 
to  heaven,  the  German  priest  or  father,  as  Tacitus  relates, 
drew  three  lots  from  among  the  marked  fruit-tree  twigs 
scattered  on  a  pure  white  garment,  and   interpreted  the 


ntum  tradidit ....  Contra  hos  [tlie  orthodox]  audacter  evomere  praesumunt 
impietatis  suae  bilem,  atque  insaiiientes,  ex  inali  spiritus  blaspliemiS,  Sculptu 
colas  voc&nt." 

'  Polack,  vol.  i.  p.  270. 

*  Bosraan,  'Guinese  Kust,'  letter  z.  ;  Eng.  Trans,  in  Pinkerton,  voL  xvi 
p.  399. 

■  Homer.     Iliad,  vii.  171. 


«    ,! 


SURVIVAL     IN    CULTURE. 


79 


answer  from  their  signs.*  As  in  ancient  Italy  oracles  ga\\! 
responses  by  graven  lots,'  so  the  modern  Hindus  decide 
disputes  by  casting  lots  in  front  of  a  temple,  appealing 
to  the  gods  with  cries  of  **  Let  justice  be  shown !  Show 
the  innocent!  "^ 

The  uncivilized  man  thinks  that  lots  or  dice  are  adjusted 
in  their  fall  with  reference  to  the  meaning  he  may  choose  to 
attach  to  it,  and  especially  he  is  apt  to  suppose  spiritual 
beings  standing  over  the  diviner  or  the  gambler,  shuffling  the 
lots  or  turning  up  the  dice  to  malce  them  give  their  answers. 
This  view  held  its  place  firmly  in  the  middle  ages,  and  later 
in  history  we  still  find  games  of  chance  looked  on  as  results 
of  supernatural  operation.  The  general  change  from 
mediaeval  to  modern  notions  in  this  respect  is  well  shown 
in  a  remarkable  work  published  in  1619,  which  seems  to 
have  done  much  toward  bringing  the  change  about.  Thomas 
Gataker,  a  Puritan  minister,  in  his  treatise  *  Of  the  Nature 
and  Use  of  Lots,'  states,  in  order  to  combat  them,  the  fol- 
lowing among  the  cm-rent  objections  made  against  games  of 
chance  : — "  Lots  may  not  be  used  but  with  great  reverence, 
because  the  disposition  of  them  commeth  immediately  from 
God"  ....  "the  nature  of  a  Lot,  which  is  affirmed  to 
bee  a  worke  of  Gods  speciall  and  immediate  providence,  a 
sacred  oracle,  a  divine  judgement  or  sentence  :  the  light  use 
of  it  therefore  to  be  an  abuse  of  Gods  name  ;  and  so  a  sinne 
against  the  third  Commandement."  Gataker,  in  opposition 
to  this,  argues  that  '*  to  expect  the  issue  and  event  of  it,  as 
by  ordinarie  meanes  from  God,  is  common  to  all  actions  : 
to  expect  it  by  an  immediate  and  extraordinarie  worke  is  no 
more  lawfull  here  than  elsewhere,  yea  is  indeed  mere  super- 
stition."* It  took  time,  however,  for  this  opinion  to  become 
prevalent  in  the  educated  world.  After  a  lapse  of  forty 
years,  Jeremy  Taylor  could  still  bring  out  a  remnant  of  the 

*  Tacit.     Gemiania.  10. 

*  Sinitli's  'Die.  of  Gr.  and  Rom.  Ant.,' arts,  'oraculum,'  'sortes.* 
'  Roberts,  '  Oriental  Illustrations,  p.  163. 

*  Gataker,  p.  141,  91  ;  see  Lecky,  •  History  of  Rationalism,'  voL  i.  p.  307 


I:! 


I 


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SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


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older  notion,  in  the  course  of  a  generally  reasonable  ai'^'u- 
ment  in  favour  of  games  of  chance  when  played  for  lefresli- 
ment  and  not  for  money.  "  I  have  heard,"  he  saj's,  "  iVom 
them  that  have  skill  in  such  things,  there  are  such  strange 
chances,  such  promoting  of  a  hand  by  fanc}'  and  little  arts 
of  geomancy,  such  constant  winning  on  one  side,  such  un- 
reasonable losses  on  the  other,  and  these  strange  contin- 
gencies produce  such  horrible  eft'ects,  that  it  is  not  im- 
probable that  God  hath  permitted  the  conduct  of  such 
games  of  chance  to  the  devil,  who  will  order  them  so  where 
he  can  do  most  mischief;  but,  without  the  instrumentality 
of  money,  he  could  do  nothing  at  all."^  With  what  vitality 
the  notion  of  supernatural  interference  in  games  of  chance 
even  now  survives  in  Europe,  is  well  shown  by  the  still 
flourishing  arts  of  gambler's  magic.  The  folk-lore  of  our 
own  day  continues  to  teach  that  a  Good  Friday's  egg  is  to 
be  carried  for  luck  in  gaming,  and  that  a  turn  of  one's  chair 
will  turn  one's  fortune  ;  the  Tyrolese  knows  the  charm  for 
getting  from  the  devil  the  gift  of  winning  at  cards  and  dice ; 
there  is  still  a  great  sale  on  the  continent  for  books  which 
show  how  to  discover,  from  dreams,  good  numbers  for  the 
lottery  ;  and  the  Lusatian  peasant  will  even  hide  his  lottery- 
tickets  under  the  alfar-cloth  that  they  maj'  receive  the 
blessing  with  the  sacrament,  and  so  stand  a  better  chance 
of  winning.^ 

Arts  of  divination  and  games  of  chance  are  so  similar  in 
principle,  that  the  very  same  instrument  passes  from  one 
use  to  the  other.  This  aj^pears  in  the  accounts,  verj 
suggestive  from  this  point  of  view,  of  the  Polynesian  art  of 
divniation  by  spinning  the  "  niu  "  or  cocoa-nut.  In  the 
Tongan  Islands,  in  Mariner's  tinxe,  the  principal  purpose 
for  which  this  was  solemnly  performed  w.is  to  inquire  if  a 
sick  person  would  recover ;  prater  was  made  aloud  to  the 
patron  god  of  the  family  to  direct  the  nut,  which  was  then 
spun,  and  its  direction  at  rest  indicated  the  intention  of  the 

*  Jeremy  Taylor,  Ductor  Duliitautiuni,  in  Works,'  vol.  xiv.  p.  3.?7. 
'■  See  Wuttke,  'Deutsche  Volksaberglaube,'  p.  96,  3 15,  178. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


81 


god.     On  other  occasions,  when  the  cocoa-nut  was  mertly 
spun  for  amusement,  no  prayer  was  made,  and  no  credit 
given  to  the  result.     Here  the  serious  and  the  sportive  use 
of  this  rudimentary  teetotum  are  found  together.     In  th(^ 
Samoan   Islands,  however,   at   a  later  date,  the  Rev.  G. 
Turner  finds  the  practice  passed  into  a  different  stage.     A 
party  sit  in  a  circle,  the  cocoa-nut  is  spun  in  the  middle, 
and  the  oracular  answer  is  according  to  the  person  towards 
whom  the  monkey-face  of  the  fruit  is  turned  when  it  stops ; 
but  whereas  formerly  the   Samoans  used  this  as  an  art  of 
divination  to  discover  thieves,  now  they  only  keep  it  up  as  a 
way  of  casting  lots,  and  as  a  game  f ''      rfeits.^     It  is  in 
fjivour  of  ihe  view  of  serious  divinatiuu  being  the  earlier 
use,  to  notice  that  the  New  Zealanders,  though  they  have 
no   cocoa-nuts,  keep  up  a  trace    of  the  time  when    their 
ancestors  in  the  tropical  islands  had  them  and  divined  with 
them  ;  for  it  is  the  well-known  Polynesian  word  *'  niu,"  i.  e. 
cocoa-nut,  which  is  still  retained  in  use  among  the  Maoris 
for  other  kinds  of  divination,  especially  that  performed  with 
sticks.     Mr.   Taylor,   who    points    out   this   curiously  neat 
piece  of  ethnological  evidence,  records  another  case  to  the 
present  purpose.     A  method  of  divination  was  to  clap  the 
hands  together  while  a  proper  charm  was  repeated ;  if  the 
fingers  went  clear  in,  it  was  favourable,  but  a  check  was  an 
ill  omen ;  on  the  question  of  a  party  crossing  the  country  in 
war-time,  the  locking  of  all  the  fingers,  or  the  stoppage  of 
some    or   all,   were    naturally  interpreted    to    mean   clear 
passage,  meeting  a  travelling  party,  or  being  stopped  alto- 
gether.    This  quaint  little  symbolic  art  of  divination  seems 
now  only  to  survive  as  a  game ;  it  is  called  "  puni-puni."^ 
A  similar  connexion  between  divination   and   gambling  is 
shown  by  more  familiar  instruments.     The  hucklebones  or 
astragali  were  used  in  divination  in  ancient  Rome,  being 
converted  into  rude  dice  by  numbering  the  four  sides,  and 


n 


;s  lU 


*  Mariner,   'Tonga  Islands,' vol.  ii.  p.  239;  Turner,  'Polynesia,'  p.  214; 
Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  i.  )).  '228.     Compare  Cranz,  'Grbnland,'  p.  231. 
3  R.  Taylor,'  '  New  Zealand,'  pp.  206,  348,  387. 

VOL.    I.  O 


IMAGE  EVALUATION 
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Hiotographic 

Sciences 

CorporatioTi 


23  WIST  MAIN  STRUT 

WEBSTIR.N.Y.  14SI0 

(716)«72-4S03 


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SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


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I'  i  I 


even  wlien  the  Roman  ganihlcr  used  the  tali  fcr  ganll)lin|L^ 
he  would  invoke  a  god  or  his  mistress  before  he  made  his 
throw.'  Such  implements  are  now  mostly  used  for  play, 
but,  )ievertheless,  their  use  for  divination  was  by  no  means 
confined  to  the  ancient  world,  for  hucklebones  are  men- 
tioned in  the  17th  century  among  the  fortune-telling  instru- 
ments which  young  girls  divined  for  husbands  with,^  and 
Negro  sorcerers  still  throw  dice  as  a  means  of  detecting 
thieves.^  Lots  serve  the  two  purposes  equally  well.  The 
Chinese  gamble  by  lots  for  cash  and  sweetmeats,  whilst 
they  also  seriously  take  omens  by  solemn  appeals  to  the 
lots  kept  ready  for  the  purpose  in  the  temples,  and  pro- 
fessional diviners  sit  in  the  market-places,  thus  to  open  the 
future  to  their  customers.*  Playing-cards  are  still  in  Euro- 
pean use  for  divination.  That  early  sort  known  as  "tarots" 
which  the  French  dealer's  license  to  sell  '*  cartes  et  tarots  " 
still  keeps  in  mind,  is  said  to  be  preferred  by  fortune-tellers 
to  the  common  kind  ;  for  the  tarot-pack,  with  its  more 
numerous  and  complex  figures,  lends  itself  to  a  greater 
variety  of  omens.  In  these  cases,  direct  history  fails  to  tell 
us  whether  the  use  of  the  instrument  for  omen  or  play  came 
first.  In  this  respect,  the  history  of  the  Greek  "  kottabos" 
is  instructive.  This  art  of  divination  consisted  in  flinging 
wine  out  of  a  cup  into  a  metal  basin  some  distance  off  with- 
out spilling  any,  the  thrower  saying  or  thinking  his  mis- 
tress's name,  and  judging  from  the  clear  or  dull  splash  of 
the  wine  on  the  metal  what  his  fortune  in  love  would  be ; 
but  in  time  the  magic  passed  out  of  the  process,  and  it 
became  a  mere  game  of  dexterity  played  for  a  prize.^  If 
this  be  a  typical  ease,  and  the  rule  be  relied  on  that  the 
serious  use  precedes  the  playful,  then  games  of  chance  may 
be  considered  survivals  in  principle  or  detail  from  corre- 

»  Siiiitli's  Die.  art.  'talus.' 
'  IJnuid,  '  Popular  Antiquities,'  vol.  it.  p.  412. 
■  I).  &  V.  Livingstone,  '  Exp.  to  Zoniliesi,'  p.  61. 

<  Dodlittle,  'Chinese,' vol.  h.  p.  108,  286—7;  see  884;  Bastian,  'OeatL 
Asi'sn,'  vol.  iii.  pp.  76,  1'25. 
*  Smith's  Die.  art.  '  cottajjos.' 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


83 


>> 


"1 


sponding  processes  of  magic — as  divination  in  sport  made 
gambling  in  earnest. 

Seeking  more  examples  of  the  lasting  on  of  fixed  habits 
among  mankind,  let  us  glance  at  a  group  of  time-honoured 
traditional  sayings,  old  saws  which  have  a  special  interest  as 
cases  of  survival.     Even  when  the  real  signification  of  these 
phrases  has  faded  out  of  men's  minds,  and  they  have  sunk 
into   sheer  nonsense,   or  have    been   overlaid   with   some 
modern    superficial    meaning,    still  the    old   formulas   are 
handed  on,  often  gaining  more  in  mystery  than  they  lose  in 
sense.     We  may  hear  people  tallc  of  "  buying  a  pig  in  a 
poke,"  whose  acquaintance  witli  English  does  not  extend  to 
knowing  what  a  poke  is.  And  certainly  those  who  wish  to  say 
that  they  have  a  great  mind  to  something,  and  who  express 
themselves  by  declaring  that  they  have  "  a  month's  mind  " 
to  it,  can  have  no  conception  of  the  hopeless  nonsense  they 
are  making  of  the  old  term  of  the  "  month's  mind  "  which 
was   really  the    monthly   service    for   a    dead   man's   soul, 
whereby  he  was  kept  in  mind  or  remembrance.    The  proper 
sense  of  the  phrase  "  sowing  his  wild  oats  "  seems  ^fenerally 
lost  in  our  modern  use  of  it.     No  doubt  it  once  implied  that 
these  ill  weeds  would  spring  up  in  later  years,  and  how  hard 
it  would  then  be  to  root  them  out.     Like  the  enemy  in  the 
parable,  the  Scandinavian  Loki,  the  mischief-maker,  is  pro- 
verbially said  in  Jutland  to  sow  his  oats  ("  nu  saaer  Lokken 
sin  liavre  "),  and  the  name  of  "  Loki's  oats  "  (Lokeshavre) 
is  given  in  Danish  to  the  wild  oats  (avena  fatua).*     Sayings 
which  have  their  source  in  some  obsolete  custom  or  tale,  of 
course  lie  especially  open  to  such  ill-usage.     It  has  become 
mere  English  to  talk  of  an  "  unlicked  cub  "  who   "  wants 
licking  into  shape,"  while  few  remember  the  explanation  of 
these  phrases  from  Pliny's  story  that  bears  are  born   as 
eyeless,  hairless,  shapeless  lumps  of  white  flesh,  and  have 
afterwards  to  be  licked  into  form.^ 
Again,  in  relics  of  old  magic  and  religion,  we  have  some- 


'  Giiimn,  '  Deutsche  Myth.'  p.  222. 
'  Pliu.  viii.  54. 


," 


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84 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


limes  to  look  for  a  deeper  sense  in  conventional  phrasea 
than  they  now  carry  on  their  face,  or  for  a  real  meaning  in 
what  now  seems  nonsense.  How  an  ethnographical  record 
may  become  embodied  in  a  popular  saying,  a  Tamil  proverb 
now  current  in  South  India  will  show  perfectl3\  On  occa- 
sions when  A  hits  B,  and  C  cries  out  at  the  blow,  the 
bystanders  will  say,  "  'Tis  like  a  Koravan  eating  asafoetida 
when  his  wife  lies  in !  "  Now  a  Koravan  belongs  to  a  low 
race  in  Madras,  and  is  defnied  as  "  gypsy,  wanderer,  ass- 
di'ivei',  thief,  eater  of  rats,  dweller  in  mat  tents,  fortune- 
teller, and  suspected  character  ;  "  and  the  explanativ.n  of 
the  proverb  is,  that  whereas  native  women  generally  eat 
asafoetida  as  strengthening  medicine  after  childbirth,  among 
the  Koravans  it  is  tlu  linsband  who  eats  it  to  fortify  himself 
on  the  occasion.  This,  in  ftict,  is  a  variety  of  the  world- 
wide custom  of  the  "  couvade,"  where  at  childbirth  the 
husband  undergoes  medical  treatment,  in  many  cases  being 
put  to  bed  for  days.  It  appears  that  the  Koravans  are 
among  the  races  practising  this  quaint  custom,  and  that 
their  more  civilized  Tamil  neighbours,  struck  by  its  oddity, 
but  unconscious  of  its  now-forgotten  meaning,  have  taken  it 
up  into  a  proverb.'  Let  us  now  apply  the  same  sort  of 
ethnographical  key  to  dark  sayings  in  our  own  modern 
language.  The  maxim,  "  a  hair  of  the  dog  that  bit  you" 
was  originally  neither  a  metaphor  nor  a  joke,  but  a  matter- 
of-fact  recipe  for  curing  the  bite  of  a  dog,  one  of  the  many 
instances  of  the  ancient  homoeopathic  doctrine,  that  what 
hurts  will  also  cure  :  it  is  mentioned  in  the  Scandinavian 
Edda,  "  Dog's  hair  bonis  dog's bite."^  The  phrase  "raising 
the  wind  "  now  passes  as  humorous  slang,  but  it  once,  in 
all  seriousness,  described  one  of  the  most  dreaded  of  the 
sorcerer's  arts,  practised  especially  by  the  Finland  wizards, 
of  whose  uncanny  power  over  the  weather  our  sailors  have 
not  to  this  day  forgotten   their  old   terror.     The  ancient 

'  From  a  letter  of  Mr.  H.  J.  Stokos,  Negiipatam,  to  Mr.  F.  M.  Jenuiuga 
General  details  of  the  Couvade  in  '  Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,'  p.  293. 
•■»  Huvumal,  138. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTUUE. 


85 


at 
m 

in 
le 
'» 

re 


ceremoii}'  or  ortl c.il  of  passin^cf  through  a  fire  or  leaping  over 
huniiug  brands  h:is   been   kci)t,   up  so   vigorously  in   tho 
British  Isles,  that  Jamieson's  derivation  of  the  phrase  "to 
haul  over  the  coals  "  from  this  rite  appears  in  no  way  far- 
fetched.    It  is  not  long  since  an  Irishwoman  in  New  York 
was  tried  for  killing  her  child ;  she  had  made  it  stand  on 
burning  coals  to  find  out  whether  it  was  really  her  own  or  a 
changeling.^    The  English  nurse  who  siys  to  a  fretful  child, 
"  You  got  out  of  bed  wrong  foot  foremost  this  morning," 
seldom  or  never  knows  the  meaning  of  her  saying  ;  but  this 
is  still  plain  in  the  German  folklore  rule,  that  to  get  out  of 
bed  left  foot  first  will  bring  a  bad  day,^  one  of  the  many 
examples  of  that  simple  association  of  ideas  which  connects 
right  and  left  with  good  and  bad  respectivel}'.    To  conclude, 
the  phrase  "cheating  the  devil"  seems  to  belong  to  that 
familiar  series  of  legends  wdiere  a  man  makes  a  compact 
with  the  fiend,  but  at  the  last  moment  gets  off  scot-free  bj' 
the  interposition  of  a  saint,  or  by  some  absurd  evasion — 
such  as  whistling  the  gospel  he  has  bound  himself  not  to 
say,  or  refusing  to  complete  his  bargain  at  the  fall  of  the 
leaf,  on  the  plea  that  the  sculptured  leaves  in  the  church 
arc    still  on   their   boughs.      One   form   of  the   mediteval 
compact  was  for  the  demon,  when  he  had  taught  his  Idack 
art  to  a  class  of  scholars,  to  seize  one  of  them  for  his  pro- 
fessional fee,  by  letting  them  all  run  for  their  lives  and 
catching  the  last — a  story  obviously  connected  with  another 
popular  saying:  "devil  take  the  hindmost."     But  even  at 
this  game  the  stupid  fiend  may  be  cheated,  as  is  told  in  the 
folk-lore   of  Spain  and   Scotland,  in   the   legends   of  the 
Marques  de  Villano  and  the  Earl  of  Southesk,  who  attended 
the  Devil's  magic  schools  at  Salamanca  and  Padua.     The 
apt  scholar  only  leaves  the  master  his  shadow  to  clutch  as 
following  hindmost  in  the  race,  and  with  this  unsubstantial 
payment   the   demon   must   needs   be    satisfied,  while  the 

'  Jamieson,   'Scottish  Dictionary,' s.  V.  'coals;'  R.  Hunt,  'Popular  Ro- 
mances,' Ist  ser.  p.  83. 

»  Wuttke,  '  Volksaberglaube,'  p.  131. 


M<i 


yAr.tat:  ■  g- '  — 


ll 


I 


If 


86 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


new-made  magician  goes  forth  free,  but  ever  after  shadow- 
less.' 

It  seems  a  fair  inference  to  think  folK-lore  nearest  to  its 
source  where  it  has  its  highest  place  and  meaning.  Thus, 
if  some  ohl  rliynie  or  saying  has  in  one  place  a  solemn 
import  in  philosophy  or  religion,  while  else  where  it  lies  at 
the  level  of  the  nurser}',  there  is  some  ground  for  treating 
the  serious  version  as  the  more  original,  and  the  playful  one 
as  its  mere  lingering  survival.  The  argument  is  not  safe, 
but  3'et  is  not  to  be  quite  overlooked.  For  instance, 
there  are  two  poems  kept  in  remembrance  among  the 
modern  Jews,  and  printed  at  the  end  of  their  book  of  Pass- 
over services  in  PIcbrcw  and  English.  One  is  that  known 
as  sna  tn  (Chad  gadya) :  it  begins,  '*  A  kid,  a  kid,  my 
father  bought  for  two  pieces  of  money ;  "  and  it-goes  on  to 
tell  how  a  cat  came  and  ate  the  kid,  and  a  dog  came  and  bit 
the  cat,  and  so  on  to  the  end. — "  Then  came  the  Holy  One, 
blessed  be  He  !  and  slew  the  angel  of  death,  who  slew  the 
butcher,  who  killed  the  ox,  that  drank  the  wat  ir,  that 
quenched  the  fire,  that  burnt  the  stick,  that  beat  the  dog, 
that  bit  the  cat,  that  ate  the  kid,  that  my  father  bought  for 
two  pieces  of  money,  a  kid,  a  kid."  This  composition  is  in 
the  '  Sepher  Haggadah,'  and  is  looked  on  by  some  Jews  as 
a  parable  concerning  the  past  and  future  of  the  Holy  Land. 
According  to  one  interpretation,  Palestine,  the  kid,  is  de- 
voured by  Babylon  the  cat;  Babylon  is  ovei'thrown  by 
Persia,  Persia  by  Greece,  Greece  by  Rome,  till  at  last  the 
Turks  prevail  in  the  land ;  but  the  Edomites  (i.e.  the 
nations  of  Europe)  shall  drive  out  the  Turks,  the  angel  of 
death  shall  destroy  the  enemies  of  Israel,  and  his  children 
shall  be  restored  under  the  rule  of  Messiah.  Irrespectively 
of  any  such  particular  interi)retation,  the  solemnity  of  the 
ending  may  incline  us  to  think  that  we  really  have  the  com- 
position here  in  something  like  its  first  form,  and  that 


Id 


'  Kocliliolz,  '  Deutscher  Glaiibe  und  Branch,'  vol.  i.  p.  120  ;  R.  Chambers, 
'  Popular  llhymes  of  Scotland, '  Miscellaneous ;  Grimm,  pp.  969,  976 ;  Wuttke, 
p.  IL"). 


y 

ie 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


87 


was  written  to  convey  a  mystic  meaning.  If  so,  then  it 
follows  that  our  familiar  nursery  tale  of  the  old  woman  who 
couldn't  get  her  kid  (or  pig)  over  the  stile,  and  wouldn't  get 
home  till  midnight,  must  be  considered  a  broken-down 
adaptation  of  this  old  Jewish  poem.  The  other  composition 
is  a  counting-poem,  and  begins  thus  : — 

"  Who  knoweth  one  ?     I  (saith  Israel)  know  One : 
One  is  God,  who  is  over  heaven  and  earth. 
Who  knoweth  two  ?     I  (saith  Israel)  know  two : 
Two  tables  of  the  covenant ;  but  One  is  our  God  who  is  over 
the  heavens  and  the  earth." 

(And  so  forth,  accumulating  up  to  the  last  verse,  whidi 
is-) 

"Who  knoweth  thirteen?  I  (saith  Israel)  know  thirteen: 
Thirteen  divine  attributes,  twelve  tribes,  eleven  stars,  ten  com- 
inuu;liucnts,  nine  months  preceeliug  childbirth,  eight  days  pre- 
ceding circumcision,  seven  days  of  the  woek,  six  books  of  the 
Misluiah,  five  books  of  the  Law,  four  matron.-!,  three  patriarchs, 
two  tables  of  the  covenant ;  but  One  is  our  God  who  is  over  tho 
heavens  and  the  earth." 

This  is  one  of  a  family  of  counting-poems,  apparently 
held  in  much  favour  in  mediaeval  Christian  times  ;  for  they 
are  not  yet  quite  forgotten  in  country  places.  An  old  Latin 
version  runs  :  "  Unus  est  Deus,"  etc.,  and  one  of  tlie  still- 
surviving  English  forms  begins,  *'  One's  One  all  alone,  and 
evermore  shall  be  so,"  and  reckons  on  as  far  as  "  Twelve, 
the  twelve  apostles."  Here  both  the  Jewish  and  Christian 
forms  are  or  have  been  serious,  so  it  is  possible  that  the 
Jew  nui}'  have  imitated  the  Christian,  but  the  nobler  form 
of  the  Hebrew  poem  here  again  gives  it  a  claim  to  be 
thought  the  earlier.^ 

The  old  proverbs  brought  down  by  long  inheritance  into 
our  modern  talk  are  far  from  being  insignificant  in  them- 
selves, for  their  wit  is  often  as  fresh,  and  their  wisdom  as 

'  Alendes,  '  Service  for  the  First  Nights  of  Passover,'  London,  1862  (in  th» 
Jewish  interpretation,  the  word  shuura, —' cut,'  is  compared  with  Skindr). 
Hailiwcll,  "Nursery  Ithynies,' p.  288;   'Popular  Rhymes,'  p.  6. 


I  m  ■■■«  -wi  ■» 


K8 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE 


fi  If 


pertinent,  as  it  ever  was.  Beyond  these  practical  qualities, 
proverbs  are  instructive  for  the  place  in  ethnography  which 
they  occupy.  Their  range  in  civilization  is  limited ;  they 
stem  scarce!}'  to  belong  to  the  lowest  tribes,  but  appear 
first  in  a  settled  form  among  some  of  the  higher  savages. 
The  Fijians,  who  were  found  a  few  years  since  living  in  what 
archaeologists  might  call  the  upper  Stone  Age,  have  some 
well-marked  proverbs.  They  laugh  at  want  of  forethouglit 
by  the  saying  that  "  The  Nakondo  people  cut  the  mast 
first"  (i.  e.,  before  they  had  built  the  canoe);  and  when  a 
poor  man  looks  wistfully  at  what  he  cannot  buy,  they  sa}', 
*'  Becalmed,  and  looking  at  the  fish."^  Among  the  list  of 
the  New  Zealanders'  "  whakatauki,"  or  proverbs,  one  de- 
scribes a  lazy  glutton  :  "  Deep  throat,  but  shallow  sinews  ;  " 
finother  says  that  the  laz}'  often  profit  by  the  work  of  the  in- 
<lustrious  :  "  The  large  chips  made  by  Hardwood  fall  to  the 
share  of  Sit-still ;  "  a  third  moralizes  that  "  A  crooked  part 
of  a  stem  of  toetoe  can  be  seen ;  but  a  crooked  part  in  the 
heart  cannot  be  seen."^  Among  the  Basutos  of  South 
Africa,  "  Water  never  gets  tired  of  running,"  is  a  reproach 
to  chatterers  ;  "  Lions  growl  while  they  are  eating,"  means 
that  there  are  people  who  never  will  enjoy  anything  ;  "  The 
sowing-month  is  the  headache-month,"  describes  those 
lazy  folks  who  make  excuses  when  work  is  to  be  done ; 
"  The  thief  eats  thunderbolts,"  means  that  he  will  bring 
down  vengeance  from  heaven  on  himself.^  West  African 
nations  are  especially  strong  in  proverbial  philosophy ;  so 
•much  so  that  Captain  Barton  amused  himself  through  the 
rainy  season  at  Fernando  Po  in  compiling  a  volume  of 
native  proverbs,*  among  which  there  are  hundreds  at  about 
as  high  an  intellectual  level  as  those  of  Europe.  **  He  fled 
from  the  sword  and  hid  in  the  scabbard,"  is  as  good  as  our 


•  Williams,  '  Fiji.'  vol.  i.  p.  110. 

*  ShortlaiiJ,  '  Traditions  of  N.  Z.'  p.  196. 

•  Ciisalis,  '  fitudes  sur  la  laiif^iie  StJchuana.' 

*  11.  F.  Burton,  *  Wit  and  Wisdom  from  West  Africa.'    See  also  Wait*, 
vol.  ii.  p.  245. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


89 


in- 
the 
lart 
the 
ith 

ch 

ns 

he 

SB 

e; 

an 
so 
he 
of 
ut 
ed 
uic 


kit«. 


"  Out  of  the  frying-pan  into  tlie  fire  ;  "  and  "  He  who  lias 
only  his  eyebrow  for  a  cross-bow  can  never  kill  an  animal," 
is  more  picturesque,  if  less  terse,  than  our  "  Hard  words 
break  no  bones."  The  old  Buddhist  aphorism,  that  **  He 
who  indulges  in  enmity  is  like  one  who  throws  ashes  to 
windward,  which  come  back  to  the  same  place  and  cover 
him  all  over,"  is  put  with  less  prose  and  as  much  point  in 
the  negro  saying,  "  Ashes  fly  back  in  the  face  of  him  who 
throws  them."  When  some  one  tries  to  settle  an  affair  in 
the  absence  of  the  people  concerned,  the  negroes  will  object 
that  "  You  can't  shave  a  man's  head  when  he  is  not  there," 
while,  to  explain  that  the  master  is  not  to  be  judged  by  the 
folly  of  his  servant,  they  sny,  "  The  rider  is  not  a  fool 
because  the  horse  is."  Ingratitude  is  alluded  to  in  "  The 
sword  knows  not  the  head  of  the  smith"  (who  made  it), 
and  yet  more  forcibly  elsewhere,  "  When  the  calabash  had 
saved  them  (in  the  famine),  they  said,  let  us  cut  it  for  a 
drinking-cup."  The  popular  contempt  for  poor  men's 
wisdom  is  put  very  neatly  in  the  maxim,  "  When  a  poor 
man  makes  a  proverb  it  does  not  spread,"  while  the  very 
mention  of  making  a  proverb  as  something  likely  to  hai)pen, 
shows  a  lanf'  where  proverb-making  is  still  a  living  art. 
Transplanted  ic  the  West  Indies,  the  African  keeps  up  tliis 
art,  as  witness  these  sayings  :  "  Behind  dog  it  is  dog,  but 
before  dog  it  is  Mr.  Dog ;  "  and  "  Toute  cabinette  tini 
maringouin  " — "  Ever}'  cabin  has  its  mosquito." 

The  proverb  has  not  changed  its  character  in  the  course 
of  history ;  but  has  retained  from  first  to  last  a  precisely 
definite  type.  The  proverbial  sayings  recorded  among  the 
higher  nations  of  the  world  are  to  be  reckoned  by  tens  of 
thousands,  and  have  a  large  and  well-known  literature  of 
their  own.  But  though  the  range  of  existence  of  proverbs 
extends  into  the  highest  levels  of  civilization,  this  is  scarcely 
true  of  their  development.  At  the  level  of  European  culture 
in  the  middle  ages,  they  have  indeed  a  vast  importance  in 
popular  education,  but  their  period  of  actual  growth  seems 
already  at  an  end.     Cervantes  raised  the  proverb-monger's 


]:■ 


ijll 


t' 


90 


SURVIVAL    IX    ClTI/rniE. 


pi  I 


•111      T       t. 


craft  to  a  pitch  it  never  suvi);isspd  ;  but  it  must  not  be  for- 
gotten that  the  incomparable  Sancho's  wares  were  mostly 
heirlooms ;  for  proverbs  were  even  then  sinking  to  remnants 
of  an  earlier  condition  of  society.  As  such,  they  survive 
among  ourselves,  who  go  on  using  much  the  same  relics  of 
ancestral  wisdom  as  came  out  of  the  squire's  inexhaustible 
budg<}t,  old  saws  not  to  be  lightly  altered  or  made  anew  in 
our  changed  modern  times.  We  can  collect  and  use  the 
old  proverbs,  but  milking  new  ones  has  become  a  feeble, 
spiritless  imitation,  like  our  attempts  to  invent  new  myths 
or  new  nurseiy  rhymes. 

Riddles  start  near  proverbs  in  the  history  of  civilization, 
and  they  travel  on  long  together,  though  at  last  towards 
different  ends.  By  riddles  are  here  meant  the  old-fashioned 
problems  with  a  real  answer  intended  to  be  discovered,  such 
as  the  typical  enigma  of  the  Sphinx,  but  not  the  modern 
verbal  conundrums  set  in  the  traditional  form  of  question 
and  answer,  as  a  way  of  bringing  in  a  jest  a  propos  of  no- 
thing. The  original  kind,  which  may  be  defined  as  "  sense- 
riddles,"  are  found  at  home  among  the  upper  savages,  and 
range  on  into  the  lower  and  middle  civilization ;  and  while 
their  growth  stops  at  this  level,  many  ancient  specimens  have 
lusted  on  in  the  modern  nursery  and  by  the  cottage  fireside. 
There  is  a  plain  reason  why  riddles  should  belong  only  to 
the  higher  grades  of  savagery  ;  their  making  requires  a  fair 
power  of  ideal  comparison,  and  knowledge  must  have  made 
considerable  advance  before  this  process  could  become  so 
familiar  as  to  fall  from  earnest  into  sport.  At  last,  in 
a  far  higher  state  of  culture,  riddles  begin  to  be  looked 
on  as  trifling,  their  gi'owth  ceases,  and  they  only  sui'vive 
in  remnants  for  children's  play.  Some  examples  chosen 
among  various  races,  from  savagery  upwards,  will  show 
more  exactly  the  place  in  mental  history  which  the  riddle 
occupies. 

The  following  are  specimens  from  a  collection  of  Zulu 
riddles,  recorded  with  quaintly  simple  native  comments  on 
the  philosoph}' of  the  matter: — Q.  "Guess  ye  some   men 


II ;,; 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTUllt:. 


91 


Lu 

In 
In 


who  are  many  and  form  a  row ;  they  dance  the  wedding- 
dance,  adorned  in  white  hip-dresses?"  A.  "  The  teeth  ; 
we  cull  them  men  who  form  a  row,  for  the  teeth  stand  like 
men  who  are  mude  ready  for  a  wedding-dance,  that  they 
may  dance  well.  AVhen  we  say,  they  are  '  adorned  with 
white  hip-dresses,'  we  put  that  in,  that  people  may  not  at 
once  think  of  teeth,  but  be  drawn  away  from  them  by  think- 
ing, '  It  is  men  who  put  on  white  hip-dresses,'  and  con- 
tinually have  their  tlioughts  fixed  on  men,"  etc.  Q.  "  Guess 
ye  a  man  who  does  not  lie  down  at  night :  he  lies  down  in 
the  morning  until  tlie  sun  sets  ;  he  then  awakes,  and  works 
all  night ;  he  does  not  work  by  day  ;  he  is  not  seen  when 
he  works  ?  "  A.  "  The  closing-poles  of  the  cattle-pen." 
Q.  "  Guess  ye  a  man  whom  men  do  not  like  to  laugh,  for  it 
is  known  that  his  laughter  is  a  verj  great  evil,  and  is  followed 
by  lamentation,  and  an  end  of  rejoicing.  Men  weep, 
and  trees,  and  grass  ;  and  everything  is  heard  weeping  in 
the  tribe  where  he  laughs ;  and  they  say  the  man  ha? 
laughed  who  does  not  usually  laugh?"  A.  "Fire.  It  is 
called  a  man  that  what  is  said  may  not  be  at  once  evident, 
it  being  concealed  by  the  word  *  man.'  Men  say  many 
things,  searching  out  the  meaning  in  rivalry,  and  missing 
the  mark.  A  riddle  is  good  when  it  is  not  discernible  at 
once,"  etc.*  Among  the  Basutos,  riddles  are  a  recognized  part 
of  education,  and  are  set  like  exercises  to  a  whole  company 
of  puzzled  children.  Q.  **  Do  you  know  what  throws  itself 
from  the  mountain-top  without  being  broken?"  A.  "  A 
waterfall."  Q.  '*  There's  a  thing  that  travels  fast  without 
legs  or  wings,  and  no  cliff,  nor  river,  nor  wall  can  stop  it  ?  " 
A.  "  The  voice."  Q.  "Name  the  ten  trees  with  ten  flat 
stones  on  the  top  of  them."  A.  **  The  fingers."  Q.  "Who 
is  the  little  immovable  dumb  boy  who  is  dressed  up  warm 
in  the  day  and  left  naked  at  night?"  A.  "The  bed- 
clothes' peg."  8     From  East  Africa,  this  Swahili  riddle  is  an 


•  Callaway,  'Nursery  Tales,  etc.  cf  Zulus,*  vol.  L  p.  364,  etc. 

^  Casalis,  '  Etudes  sur  la  laiigue  Sdclmaua,'  p.  91 ;  '  Basutos,'  p.  337. 


w 


^';! 


liill 


92 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


example:  Q.  '*  My  hen  has  laid  among  thorns?"  A.  "A 
pineapple."' ^  From  West  Africa,  this  Yoruba  one:  "A 
long  slender  trading  wouuin  who  never  gets  to  mar"  et  ?  " 
A.  "  A  canoe  (it  stops  at  the  landing-place)."  ^  In  Pol}'- 
nesia,  the  Samoan  islanders  are  given  to  riddles.  (J. 
"  There  are  four  brothers,  who  are  always  bearing  about 
their  father?"  A.  "The  Samoan  pillow,"  which  is  a 
yard  of  three-inch  bamboo  resting  on  four  legs.  Q.  "A 
white-headed  man  stands  above  the  fence,  and  reaches  to 
the  heavens?"  A.  "The  smuk"  of  the  oven."  Q.  "A 
man  who  stands  between  two  ravenous  fish ?  "  A.  '•  The 
tongue."  *  (There  is  a  Zulu  riddle  like  this,  which  com- 
pares the  tongue  to  a  man  living  in  the  midst  of  enemies 
fighting.)  The  following  are  old  Mexican  enigmas :  Q. 
"  "What  are  the  ten  stones  one  has  at  his  sides  ?  "  A.  "  The 
finger-nails."  Q.  "  What  is  it  we  get  into  by  tliree  parts 
and  out  of  by  one?"  A.  "  A  shirt."  Q.  "What  goes 
through  a  valley  and  drags  its  entrails  after  it?  "  A.  "  A 
needle."  * 

These  riddles  found  among  the  lower  races  do  not  differ 
at  all  in  nature  from  those  that  liave  come  down,  sometimes 
modernized  in  the  setting,  into  the  nursery  lore  of  Europe. 
Thus  Spanish  children  still  ask,  "  What  is  the  dish  of  nuts 
that  is  gathered  by  day,  and  scattered  b}'  night  ? "  (the 
stars.)  Our  English  riddle  of  tlie  pair  of  tongs  :  "  Long 
legs,  crooked  thighs,  little  head,  and  no  eyes,"  is  primitive 
enough  to  have  been  made  by  a  South  Sea  Islander.  The 
following  is  on  the  same  theme  as  one  of  the  Zulu  riddles  : 
"  A  flock  of  white  sheep.  On  a  red  hill ;  Here  they  go,  there 
they  go ;  Now  they  stand  still  ?  "  Another  is  the  very 
analogue  of  one  of  the  Aztec  specimens  :  "  Old  Mother 
Twitchett  had  but  one  eye,  And  a  long  tail  which  rVe  let  fly ; 


i  I  » 


m 


i-  »<■ 


•  Steere,  '  Swahili  Tales,'  p.  418. 

2  Burton,  •  Wit  and  Wisdom  from  West  Africa,'  p.  212. 

^  Turner,  •Polynesia,'  p.  216.    ^-ee  Polack,  'NewZealanders,' vol.  ii.  p.  171. 

*  Sahagun,  '  Historia  de  Nueva  Espaiia,'  in  Kingsborough's  'Antiquities  of 
Mexico,'  vol.  vii.  p.  178. 


SUllVIVAL    IN    CULTUUt:. 


93 


And  every  time  she  went  over  a  gap,  She  left  a  bit  of  her 
tail  in  a  trap  ?  " 

So  thorouglily  does  riddle-making  belong  to  the  mytlio- 
logic  stage  of  thought,  that  any  poet's  simile,  if  not  too  far- 
fetdied,  needs  only  inversion  to  be  made  at  once  into  an 
enigma.  The  Hindu  calls  the  Sun  Saplasva,  i.  e.,  "  seven- 
horsed,"  while,  with  the  same  thought,  the  old  German  riddle 
asks,  "  \Miat  is  the  chariot  drawn  by  seven  white  and  seven 
black  horses?"  (the  year,  drawn  by  the  seven  days  and 
nights  of  the  week.^)  Such,  too,  is  the  Greek  riddle  of  the 
two  sisters,  Day  and  Night,  who  give  birth  each  to  the  other, 
to  be  born  of  her  again  : 

Elffl  Kaalyvr]Tai  Sirrai,  i>v  i\  fila  rlKrei 

Tijv  (T€pav,  out))  5«  rtKova'  vnh  TrjsSe  TfKvovrcu. 


re 
ie 


and  the  enigma  of  Kleoboulos,  with  its  other  like  fragments 
of  rudimcntiirv  mvthologv : 

Efj  6  TraT-f]p,  TTaiSfs  6e  Suci5«Ka*  twv  Se  y  tKiartf 
nalSes  iaai  Tpn]Kovr'  dvSixa  «f5os  Ix"""''"' 
*^Hi  fiiv  \fVKa\  taffiv  I5e7v,  7;  5'  out«  /UfAoivai* 
'AflovaTOj  S4  t'  4ov(Tai  dTTorpdii'ovmv  oio'Toi. 

"  One  is  the  fiithor,  and  twelve  the  children,  and,  born  unto  each  one, 
Maidons  thirty,  whose  form  in  twain  is  parted  asunder, 
White  to  behold  on  the  one  side,  bhick  to  behold  on  the  other, 
All  immortal  in  being,  yet  doomed  to  dwindle  and  perish."  " 

Such  questions  as  these  may  be  fairly  guessed  now  as  in  old 
times,  and  must  be  distinguished  from  that  scarcer  class 
which  require  the  divination  of  some  unlikely  event  to  solve 
them.  Of  such  the  typical  example  is  Samson's  riddle,  and 
there  is  an  old  Scandinavian  one  like  it.  The  story  is 
that  Gestr  found  a  duck  sitting  on  her  nest  in  an  ox's 
horned  skull,  and  thereupon  propounded  a  riddle,  describing 
with  characteristic  Northman's  metaphor  the  ox  with  its 
horns  fancied  as  already  made  into  drinking-horns.  The 
following  translation  does  not  exaggerate  the  quaintness  of 


*d 


'  Grimm,  p.  699. 


*  Diog.  Laert.  i.  91 ;  Athenagoras,  z.  451. 


In 


ui 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


the  original:  —  "Joying  in  children  the  bill-goose  gr?w, 
And  her  building-timbers  together  drew  ;  The  bitin;j;  gniss- 
shearer  screened  her  bed,  With  the  maddening  drink-stream 
overhead."  ^  Many  of  the  old  oracular  responses  are  puzzles 
of  precisel}'  this  kind.  Such  is  the  story  of  the  Delpliic 
oracle,  which  ordered  Temenos  to  find  a  man  with  three 
eyes  to  guide  the  arm}',  which  injunction  he  fulfilled  by 
meeting  a  one-eyed  man  on  horseback.3  It  is  curious  to 
find  this  idea  again  in  Scandinavia,  where  Odin  sets  King 
Ileidvek  a  riddle,  "  Who  are  they  two  that  fare  to  the 
Thing  with  three  eyes,  ten  feet,  and  one  tail?  "  the  answer 
being,  the  one-eyed  Odin  himself  on  his  eight-footed  horse 
Sleipnir.' 

The  close  bearing  of  the  doctrine  of  survival  on  the  study 
of  manners  and  customs  is  constantly  coming  into  view 
in  ethnographic  research.  It  seems  scarcely  too  much  to 
assert,  once  for  all,  that  meaningless  customs  njust  be  sur- 
vivals, that  they  had  a  practical,  or  at  least  ceremoninl, 
intention  when  and  where  they  first  arose,  but  are  now  fallen 
into  absurdity  from  having  been  carried  on  into  a  new  state 
of  society,  where  their  original  sense  has  been  discarded. 
Of  course,  new  customs  introduced  in  particular  ages  may 
be  ridiculous  or  wicked,  but  as  a  rule  they  have  discernible 
motives.  Explanations  of  this  kind,  by  recourse  to  some 
forgotten  meaning,  seem  on  the  whole  to  account  best  for 
obscure  customs  which  some  have  set  down  to  mere  out- 
breaks of  spontaneous  foil}'.  A  certain  Zimmermann,  who 
published  a  heavy  *  Geograpliical  History  of  Mankind*  in 
the  last  century,  remarks  as  follows  on  the  prevalence  of 
Bimilar  nonsensical  and   stupid  customs   in  distant  coun- 

*  Maunliardt's  '  Zcitschr.  fiir  Deutsche  Mythologie,'  voL  UL  p.  2,  etc. : 

"  N6g  er  fortlum  nbsgds  vaxin, 
Bamgiora  hu  er  bar  butimbr  saman ; 
Hlif'thu  henni  halms  bitskaliiiir, 
Th6  14  drykkjar  drynhrfiiiu  yfir." 

•  fiee  Grote,  •  Hist,  of  Greec*},'  vol.  ii.  p.  6. 
Manuhardt's  'Zcitschr.'  1.  c 


i 


^ 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTUKE. 


95 


?w. 


tor 

it- 


tries  : — "For  if  two  clever  heads  may,  each  for  hinisi  If.  hit 
upon  a  clever  invention  or  discovery,  then  it  is  fur  likclici-, 
considering  the  much  larger  total  of  fools  and  hlockheads, 
that  like  fooleries  should  be  given  to  two  far-distant  lands. 
If,  then,  the  inventive  fool  be  likewise  a  man  of  importance 
and  influence,  as  is,  indeed,  an  extremely  frequent  case, 
then  both  nations  adopt  a  similar  folly,  and  then,  centuries 
after,  some  historian  goes  through  it  to  extract  his  evidence 
for  the  derivation  of  these  two  nations  one  from  the 
o-ther."i 

Strong  views  as  to  the  folly  of  mankind  seem  to  have 
been  in  the  air  about  the  time  of  the  French  Revolution. 
Lord  Cliesterfield  was  no  doubt  an  exLemely  different 
person  from  our  German  philosopher,  but  they  were  quite 
at  one  as  to  the  absurdity  of  customs.  Advising  his  son 
as  to  the  etiquette  of  courts,  the  Earl  writes  thus  to  him: — 
"  For  example,  it  is  respectful  to  bow  to  the  King  of 
England,  it  is  disrespectful  to  bow  to  the  King  of  France ; 
it  is  the  rule  to  courtesy  to  the  Emperor ;  and  the  prostra- 
tion of  the  whole  body  is  required  by  Eastern  Monarchs. 
These  are  established  ceremonies,  and  must  be  complied 
with;  but  why  they  were  established,  I  defy  sense  and 
reason  to  tell  us.  It  is  the  same  among  all  ranks,  where 
certain  customs  are  received,  and  must  necessarily  be  com- 
plied with,  though  by  no  means  the  result  of  sense  and 
reason.  As  for  instance,  the  very  absurd,  though  almost 
universal  custom  of  drinking  people's  healths.  Can  there 
be  anything  in  the  world  less  relative  to  any  other  man's 
health,  than  my  drinking  a  glass  of  wine  ?  Common  sense, 
certainly,  never  pointed  it  out,  but  yet  common  sense  tells 
me  I  must  conform  to  it."*  Now,  though  it  might  be 
difficult  enough  to  make  sense  of  the  minor  details  of 
court  etiquette,   Lord   Chesterfield's   example   from  it  of 


m 


*  E.  A.  W.  Zimmermann,  '  Geogrniiliisehe  Geschichifl  des  Menschen,'  etc., 
1778— SR.  vol.  iii.  See  Professor  Holleston's  Inaugural  Address,  British 
Association,  1870. 

»  I'ail  of  Cliesterfield,  'Letters  to  his  Son,'  vol.  ii.  No.  Ijviii. 


i 


it 


ii 


p 


i ; 


I  : 


It' 


96 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


the  iiTJitioiiality  of  mankind  is  a  singularl}'  uuliukv  one. 
Indeed,  if  any  one  were  told  to  set  forth  in  few  words  tlie 
relations  of  the  people  to  their  rulers  in  different  states  of 
society,  he  might  answer  that  men  grovel  on  their  faces 
before  the  King  of  Siam,  kneel  on  one  knee  or  uncover 
before  a  European  monarch,  and  shake  the  hand  of  the 
President  of  the  United  States  as  though  it  were  a  pump- 
handle.  These  are  cereinonios  at  once  intelligible  and 
significant.  Lord  Chesterfield  is  more  fortunate  in  his 
second  instance,  for  the  custom  of  driiddng  healths  is  really 
of  obscure  origin.  Yet  it  is  closely  connected  with  an 
ancient  rite,  practically  absurd  indeed,  but  done  with  a 
conscious  and  serious  intention  which  lands  it  quite  outside 
the  region  of  nonsense.  This  is  the  custom  of  pouring  out 
libations  and  drinking  at  ceremonial  banquets  to  gods  and 
the  dead.  Thus  the  old  Northmen  drank  the  !*minni"  of 
Thor,  Odin,  and  Freya,  and  of  kings  likewise  at  their 
funerals.  The  custom  did  not  die  out  with  the  conversion 
of  the  Scandinavian  and  Teutonic  nations.  Such  formulas 
as  "  God's  minne  !  "  "a  bowl  to  God  in  heaven  !  "  are  on 
record,  while  in  like  manner  Christ,  jNIiiry,  and  the  Saints 
were  drunk  to  in  place  of  heathen  gods  and  heroes,  and 
the  habit  of  drinking  to  the  dead  and  the  living  at  the 
same  least  and  in  similar  terms  goes  far  to  prove  here  a 
common  origin  for  both  ceremonies.  The  "  minne  "  was 
at  once  love,  memory,  and  the  thought  of  the  absent, 
and  it  long  survived  in  England  in  the  "minnying"  or 
"mynde"  days,  on  which  tlie  memory  of  the  dead  was  cele- 
brated by  services  or  ban(piots.  Such  evidence  as  this 
fairly  justifies  the  writers,  older  and  newer,  who  have 
treated  these  ceremonial  drinking  usages  as  in  their  nature 
sacrificial.^  As  for  the  practice  of  simply  drinking  the 
health  of  living  men,  its  ancient  history  reaches  us  from 
several  districts  inhabited  by  Aryan  nations.     The  Greeks 

•  See  Ilylteii-Cavallius,  '  Wareinl  ocli  Winlarno,' vol.  i.  p.  161—70;  Grimm, 
pp.  52     5,  1201  ;  Brand,  vol.  ii.  pp.  314,  325,  etc. 


':* 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


97 


he 

a 

as 


! 


in  symposium  drank  to  one  another,  and  the  Rom.ans 
adopted  the  habit  (TrpomWiy,  propinare,  Grodno  more  bibere). 
The  Goths  cried  "hails  !  "  as  they  pledged  each  other,  hs 
we  have  it  in  the  curious  first  line  of  the  verses  "  Dl- 
conviviis  barbaris"  in  the  Latin  Anthology,  which  sets 
down  the  shouts  of  a  Gothic  drinking-bout  of  the  fifth 
century  or  so,  in  words  which  still  partly  keep  their  sense 
to  an  English  ear : — 

"Inter  eih  Goticum  scapiamatziaia  drincnn 
Nou  audet  quisquam  dignos  educere  versus." 

As  for  ourselves,  though  the  old  drinking  salutation  of 
"  w.nes  luel !  "  is  no  longer  vulgar  English,  the  formula 
i-emains  with  us,  stiffened  into  a  noun.  On  the  whole, 
there  is  presumptive  though  not  conclusive  evidence  that 
the  custom  of  drinking  healths  to  the  living  is  historically 
related  to  the  religious  rite  of  drinking  to  the  gods  and 
the  (lead. 

Let  us  now  put  the  theory  of  survival  to  a  somewhat 
severe  test,  by  seeking  from  it  some  explanation  of  the 
existence,  in  practice  or  memory,  within  the  limits  of 
modern  civilized  society,  of  three  remarkable  groups  of 
customs  which  civilized  ideas  totally  fail  to  account  for. 
Though  we  may  not  succeed  in  giving  clear  and  absolute 
explanations  of  their  motives,  at  any  rate  it  is  a  step  in 
advance  to  be  able  to  refer  their  origins  to  savage  or 
barbaric  antiquity.  Looking  at  these  customs  from  the 
modern  practical  point  of  view,  one  is  ridiculous,  the  others 
are  atrocious,  and  all  are  senseless.  The  first  is  the  prac- 
tice of  salutation  on  sneezing,  the  second  the  rite  of  laying 
the  foundations  of  a  building  on  a  human  victim,  the  third 
the  prejudice  against  saving  a  drowning  man. 

Li  interpreting  the  customs  coiuiected  with  sneezing,  it 
is  needful  to  recognize  a  prevalent  doctrine  of  the  lower 
races,  of  which  a  full  account  will  be  given  in  another 
chapter.  As  a  man's  soul  is  considered  to  go  in  and  out 
of  his  body,  so  it  is  with  other  spirits,  particularly  such  as 

VUL.  I.  u 


II 


ir 


>  ' 


■I' ' 


:i  , 


98 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


\i 


enter  into  patients  and  possess  them  or  afflict  them  with 
disease.  x\mong  the  less  cultured  races,  the  connexion  of 
this  idea  with  sneezing  is  hest  shown  among  the  Zulus,  a 
people  fii-nily  persuaded  that  kindl}'  or  angry  spirits  of  the 
dead  hover  about  them,  do  them  good  or  harm,  stand 
visibly  before  them  in  dreams,  enter  into  them,  and  cause 
diseases  in  them.  The  following  particulars  are  abridged 
from  the  native  statements  taken  down  by  Dr.  Callaway  : — 
When  a  Zulu  sneezes,  he  will  say,  **I  am  now  blessed. 
The  Idhlozi  (ancestral  spirit)  is  with  me ;  it  has  come  to 
me.  Let  me  hasten  and  praise  it,  for  it  is  it  which  causes 
me  to  sneeze  !  "  So  he  praises  the  manes  of  his  family, 
asking  for  cattle,  and  wives,  and  blessings.  Sneezing  is  a 
sign  that  a  sick  person  will  be  restored  to  health;  he 
returns  thanks  after  sneezing,  saying,  "  Ye  people  of  ours, 
I  have  gained  that  prosperity  which  I  wanted.  Continue 
to  look  on  me  with  favour !  "  Sneezing  reminds  a  man 
that  he  should  name  the  Itongo  (ancestral  spirit)  of  his 
people  without  delay,  because  it  is  the  Itongo  which  causes 
him  to  sneeze,  that  he  may  perceive  by  sneezing  that  the 
Itongo  is  with  him.  If  a  man  is  ill  and  does  not  sneeze, 
those  who  come  to  him  ask  whether  he  has  sneezed  or  not ; 
if  he  has  not  sneezed,  they  murmur,  saying,  "  The  disease 
is  great !  "  If  a  child  sneezes,  they  say  to  it,  "  Grow  !  "  it 
is  a  sign  of  health.  So  then,  it  is  said,  sneezing  among 
black  men  gives  a  man  strength  to  remember  that  the 
Itongo  has  entered  into  him  and  abides  with  him.  The 
Zulu  diviners  or  sorcerers  are  ver}'  apt  to  sneeze,  which 
they  regard  as  an  indication  of  the  presence  of  the  spirits, 
whom  they  adore  by  saying  "Makosi!"  (i.e.,  lords  or 
masters).  It  is  a  suggestive  example  of  the  transition  of 
such  customs  as  these  from  one  religion  to  another,  that 
the  Auiakosa,  who  used  to  call  on  their  divine  ancestor 
Utixo  when  they  sneezed,  since  their  conversion  to  Chris- 
tianity say,  **  Preserver,  look  upon  me  !  "  or,  **  Creator  of 
heaven  and  earth !  "  ^     Elsewhere  in  Africa,  similar  ideas 

'  Calluway,  '  Religion  of  Amazulu,'  pp.  64,  222—6,  263. 


i  t 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


99 


*  Vulgar 


i;    he 
ours, 
itiiiue 
L  man 
of  his 
auses 
it  the 
leeze, 
not; 
sease 
!"it 
aiong 
the 
The 
hich 
|irits, 
Is   or 
n  of 
tliat 
stor 
iris- 
ir  of 
eas 


are  mentioned.  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  in  his 
Errors,*  made  well  known  the  story  that  when  the  King 
of  Monomotapa  sneezed,  acclamations  of  blubsiug  passed 
from  mouth  to  mouth  through  the  city ;  but  he  sliould 
have  mentioned  that  Godigno,  from  whom  the  original 
account  is  taken,  said  that  this  took  place  when  the  king 
drank,  or  coughed,  or  sneezed.^  A  later  account  from  the 
other  side  of  the  continent  is  more  to  the  purpose.  In 
Guinea,  in  the  last  century,  when  a  principal  personage 
sneezed,  all  present  fell  on  their  knees,  kissed  the  earth, 
clapped  their  hands,  and  wished  him  all  happiness  and 
prosperity.^  With  a  dilTerent  idea,  the  negroes  of  Old 
Calabar,  when  a  child  sneezes,  will  sometimes  exclaim, 
"  Far  from  you ! "  with  an  appropriate  gesture  as  if 
throwing  off  some  evil.^  Polynesia  is  another  region  where 
the  sneezing  salutation  is  well  marked.  In  New  Zealaiul, 
a  charm  was  said  to  prevent  evil  when  a  child  sneezed ;  * 
if  a  Samoan  sneezed,  the  bystanders  said,  "  Life  to  you  !  "  ^ 
while  in  the  Tongan  group  a  sneeze  on  the  starting  of  an 
expedition  was  a  most  evil  presage.^  A  curious  American 
instance  dates  from  Hernando  de  Soto's  famous  expedition 
into  Florida,  when  Guachoya,  a  native  chief,  came  to  pay 
him  a  visit.  "  While  this  was  going  on,  the  cacique 
Guachoya  gave  a  great  sneeze ;  the  gentlemen  who  had 
come  with  him  and  were  lining  the  walls  of  the  hall  among 
the  Spaniards  there  all  at  once  bowing  their  heads,  opening 
their  arms  and  closing  them  again,  and  making  other 
gestures  of  great  veneration  and  respect,  saluted  hiui  witli 
diil'erent  words,  all  directed  to  one  end,  saying,  '  The  Sua 
guard  thee,  be  with  thee,  enlighten  thee,  magnify  thee, 
protect  thee,  favour  thee,  defend  thee,  prosper  thee,  save 
thee,'  and  other  like  phrases,  as  the  words  came,  and  for  a 

'  Godiginis,  'Vita  Patris  Gonzali  Sylveriae.'   Col.  Agrinp.  1616  ;  lib.  ii.  o.  X. 
'  Bosnian,  '  Guinea,'  lotter  xviii.  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  xvi.  p.  478. 

•  Burton,  '  Wit  and  Wisdom  from  West  Africa,'  p.  373. 

*  Sbortland,  «  Trads.  of  New  Zealand,'  p.  131. 

*  Turner,  '  Polynesia,'  p.  348  ;  see  alsn  Williams,  *  Fiji,'  vol.  i.  p.  250. 

•  Jilariucr,  '  Tonga  Is.'  vol.  i.  d.  45tJ. 

H  2 


1,11"  1 

m 


I  ! 


i    '.i' 


100 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


good  space  there  lingered  the  murmur  of  these  words  among 
them,  whereat  the  governor  wondering  said  to  the  gentle- 
men and  captains  with  him,  *  Do  you  not  see  that  all  the 
world  is  one  ? '  This  matter  was  well  noted  among  the 
Spaniards,  that  among  so  barbarous  a  people  should  be 
used  the  same  ceremonies,  or  greater,  than  among  those 
who  hold  themselves  to  be  very  civilized.  Whence  it  may 
be  believed  that  this  maimer  of  salutation  is  natural  among 
all  nations,  and  not  caused  by  a  pestilence,  as  is  vulgarly 
said,"  etc.^ 

In  Asia  and  Europe,  the  sneezing  superstition  extends 
through  a  wide  range  of  race,  age,  and  country .'^  Among 
the  passages  relating  to  it  in  the  classic  ages  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  the  following  are  some  of  the  most  characteristic, — 
the  lucky  sneeze  of  Ttlemachos  in  the  Odyssey;^  the 
soldier's  sneeze  and  the  shout  of  adoration  to  the  god  which 
rose  along  the  ranks,  and  which  Xenophon  appealed  to  as  a 
favourable  omen;*  Aristotle's  remark  that  people  con- 
sider a  sneeze  as  divine  {tov  [X€v  itrapixov  Oeov  ij-yovixeda  elrai), 
but  not  a  cough,^  etc. ;  the  Greek  epigram  on  the  man  with 
the  long  nose,  who  did  not  say  Zev  a<j^aov  when  he  sneezed, 
for  the  noise  was  too  far  off  for  him  to  hear;^  Petronius 
Arbiter's  mention  of  the  custom  of  saying  "  Salve  !"  to  one 
who  sneezed;'''  and  Pliny's  question,  "Cur  sternutameutis 
salutamus  ?  "  apropos  of  which  he  remarks  that  even  Tibe- 
rius Caesar,  that  saddest  of  men,  exacted  this  observance.' 

*  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega,  '  Hist,  de  la  Florida,'  vol.  iii.  ch.  xli. 

'  Among  dissertations  on  the  subject,  see  especially  Sir  Thos.  Browne, 
'Pseudodoxia  Epidemica*  (Vulgar  Errors),  bookiv.  chap.  ix.  ;  Brand,  'Populai 
Antiquities,'  vol.  iii.  p.  119,  etc.  ;  E.  G.  Haliburtou,  'New  Materials  for  the 
History  of  Man.'  Halifax,  N.  S.  1863  ;  '  Encyclopsedia  Britanuica,'  art. 
'  sneezing  ; '  Wernsdorf,  '  De  Ritu  Steruutantibus  bene  precaadu'  Leipzig, 
17^1  ;  see  also  Grimm,  D.  M.  p.  1070,  note. 

*  Homer.  Udyss.  xvii.  541. 

*  Xenophon.  Anabasis,  iii.  2,  9. 

•  Aristot.  Problem,  xxxiii.  7. 

•  Anthologia  Grajca,  Brunck,  voL  iii,  p.  9S. 
'  Petron.  Arb.  Sat.  98. 

•  Pliu.  xxviii.  5. 


u 


SURVIVAL    IN    LLLTUllE. 


101 


0, 

th 


ha 


Similar  rites  of  .-..ieezing  have  long  been  observed  in  Eastern 

Asiii.^     When  a  Hindu  sneeze  s,  bystanders  say,  "  Live  !  " 

and  the  sneezer  replies,  **  With  you  !"    It  is  an  ill  omen,  to 

which    among    others    the    Thugs    paid   great    regard    on 

starting  on  an  expedition,  and  which  even  compelled  them 

to  let  the  travellers  with  them  escape.^ 

The  Jewish  sneezing  formula  is,  "  Tobim  chayim  !  **  i.e., 

"  Good  life  !  "»   The  Moslem  says,  "  Praise  to  Allah! "  when 

he  sneezes,  and  his  friends  compliment  him  with  proper 

formulas,  a  custom  which  seems  to  be  conveyed  from  race 

to   race   wherever   Islam   extends.*       Lastly,   the    custom 

ranged  through  mediaeval  into  modern  Europe.     To  cite  old 

German  examples,  "  Die  Heiden  nicht  endorften  niesen,  da 

man  doch   sprichet   *Nu  helfiu  Got!'"    "  Wir  sprechen, 

swer  niuset.  Got  helfe  dir."^      For  a  combined  English  and 

French  example,  the  following  lines  (a.d.  1100)  may  serve, 

which  show  our  old  formula  "vvaes  hsel !  *'   ("  may  you  be 

well !  " — "  wassail  I ")  used  also  to  avert  being  taken  ill  after 

a  sneeze : — 

"  E  pur  une  feyze  esternuer 
Tantot  qiiident  mal  trouer. 
Si  uesheil  ne  diez  aprez."  ' 

In  the  *  Rules  of  Civility '  (a.d.  1685,  translated  from  the 
French)  we  read  : — "  If  his  lordship  chances  to  sneeze,  you 
are  not  to  bawl  out,  '  God  bless  you,  sir,'  but,  pulling  off 
your  hat,  bow  to  him  handsomely,  and  make  that  obsecra- 
tion to   yourself."''      It   is  noticed  that  Anabaptists  and 

•  Noel,  '  Die.  des  Origiiies  ; '  Migne,  '  Die.  des  Superstitions,'  etc. ;  Bastian, 
'Oestl.  Asien,'vol.  ii.  p.  129. 

=*  Ward,  'Hindoos,'  vol.  i.  p.  142;  Dubois,  '  Peuples  de  I'lnde,'  vol.  L 
p.  465  ;  Sleeman,  '  Ramaseeana,'  p.  120. 

'  Buxtorf,  *  liexicon  Chaldaicuin  ; '  Tendlau,  '  Sprichwbrter,  etc.  Dautsch- 
Judischer  Vorzeit.'     Fraiikf.  a.  M.,  1860,  p.  142. 

•  Lane,  '  Modern  Ej^yptians,'  vol.  i.  p.  282.  See  Grant,  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soo.' 
vol.  iii.  p.  90. 

»  Grimm,  'D.  M.' pp.  1070,  1110. 

•  'Manuel  des  Pecclids,'  in  Wedgwood,  'Die  English  Etymology, '  •.  T. 
■'wassail.' 

7  Brand,  vol.  iii.  p.  126. 


ii 


it 


U 


i.  u 


f: 

tit 

1.,  S 


102 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


Quakers  rejected  these  with  other  siilutations,  but  they 
remained  in  the  code  of  English  good  manners  p.mong  high 
and  low  till  half  a  century  or  so  ago,  and  are  so  little  for- 
gotten now,  that  most  people  still  see  the  point  of  the  story 
of  the  fiddler  and  his  wife,  where  his  sneeze  and  her  hearty 
"  God  bless  you !  "  brought  about  the  removal  of  the  fiddle 
case.  "  Gott  hilf!"  may  still  be  heard  in  Germany,  and 
*'  Felicita  !  "  in  Italy. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  existence  of  these  absurd 
customs  should  have  been  for  ages  a  puzzle  to  curious 
inquirers.  Especially  the  legend-mongers  took  the  matter 
in  hand,  and  their  attempts  to  devise  historical  explanations 
are  on  record  in  a  group  of  philosophic  myths, — Greek, 
Jewish,  Christian.  Prometheus  prays  for  the  preservation 
of  his  artificial  man,  when  it  gives  the  first  sign  of  life  by  a 
sneeze  ;  Jacob  prays  that  man's  soul  nui}-  not,  as  heretofore, 
depart  from  his  body  when  he  sneezes  ;  Pope  Gregory'  prays 
to  avert  the  pestilence,  in  those  days  when  the  air  was  so 
deadly  that  he  who  sneezed  died  of  it ;  and  from  these 
imaginary  events  legend  declares  that  the  use  of  the  sneez- 
ing formulas  was  handed  down.  It  is  more  to  our  purpose 
to  notice  the  existence  of  a  corresponding  set  of  ideas  and 
customs  connected  with  gaping.  Among  the  Zulus,  repeated 
yawning  and  sneezing  are  classed  together  as  signs  of 
approaching  spiritual  possession.^  The  Hindu,  when  he 
gapes,  must  snap  his  thumb  and  finger,  and  repeat  the  name 
of  some  God,  as  Rama  :  to  neglect  this  is  a  sin  as  great  as 
the  murder  of  a  Brahman."  The  Persians  ascribe  yawning, 
sneezing,  etc.,  to  demoniacal  possession.  Among  the  modern 
Moslems  generally,  when  a  man  yawns,  he  puts  the  back  of 
his  left  hand  to  his  mouth,  saying,  "I  seek  refuge  with 
Allah  from  Satan  the  accursed !  "  but  the  act  of  yawning  is 
to  be  avoided,  for  the  Devil  is  in  the  habit  of  leaping  into 
a  gaping  mouth.^    This  may  very  likely  be  the  meaning  of 

>  Callaway,  p.  263.  2  Ward,  1.  o. 

*  'Pend-Numeh,'  tr.  de  Sacy,   ch.  Ixiii.  ;  Maury,   'Magie,'  etc,  p.  302; 
I,  nn,  1.  c. 


I 


ill 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


103 


Iru 
]of 
Ith 
is 
jto 
lof 


the  Jewish  proverb,  "  Open  not  thy  mouth  to  Satan  !  "  The 
other  half  of  Jiis  idea  sliows  itself  clearly  in  Joseplius'  story 
of  his  having  seen  a  certain  Jew,  named  Eleazar,  cure 
demoniacs  in  Vespasian's  time,  by  drawing  the  demons  out 
through  their  nostrils,  by  means  of  a  ring  containing  a  root 
of  mystic  virtue  mentioned  by  Solomon.^  The  account  of  the 
sect  of  the  Messalians,  who  used  to  spit  and  blow  their  noses 
to  expel  the  demons  they  might  have  drawn  in  with  their 
breath,*^  the  records  of  the  medireval  exorcists  driving  out 
devils  through  the  patients'  nostrils,^  and  the  custom,  still 
kept  up  in  the  Tyrol,  of  crossing  oneself  when  one  yawns, 
lest  something  evil  should  come  into  one's  mouth,*  involve 
similar  ideas.  In  comparing  the  modern  Kafir  ideas  with 
those  of  other  districts  of  the  Avorld,  we  find  a  distinct  notion 
of  a  sneeze  being  due  to  a  spiritual  presence.  This,  which 
seems  indeed  the  key  to  the  whole  matter,  has  been  well 
brouglit  into  view  by  Mr.  Plaliburton,  as  displayed  in  Keltic 
folklore,  in  a  group  of  stories  turning  on  the  superstition 
that  any  one  who  sneezes  is  liable  to  be  carried  off  b}^  the 
fairies,  unless  their  power  be  counteracted  by  an  invocation, 
as  "  God  bless  you  !  "^  The  corresponding  idea  as  to  yawn- 
ing is  to  be  found  in  an  Iceland  folklore  legend,  where  the 
troll,  who  has  transformed  herself  into  the  shape  of  the 
beautiful  queen,  says,  "When  I  yawn  a  little  yawn,  I  am  a 
neat  and  tiny  maiden  ;  when  I  yawn  a  half-yawn,  then  I  am 
as  a  half- troll ;  when  I  yawn  a  whole  yawn,  tben  am  I 
as  a  whole  troll."*  On  the  whole,  though  the  sneezing 
superstition  makes  no  approach  to  universality  among  man- 
kind, its  wide  distribution  is  highly  remarkable,  and  it  would 
be  an  interesting  problem  to  decide  how  far  this  wide  distri- 
bution is  due  to  independent  growth  in  several  regions, 

'  G.  Brecher,   'Das  Transcendentale  im  Talraud,'  p.  168;  Joseph.  Ant. 
Juil.  viii.  2,  5. 
■^  Migne,  *  Die.  des  HtrLsies,'  s.  v. 
'  Bastian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  115,  322. 

*  Wuttke,  '  Deutsche  Volksaberglaulje,*  p.  137. 

*  Haliburton,  op.  cit. 

*  Powell  and  Magnusseu,  'Ijegends  of  Iceland,'  2ud  ser.  p.  448. 


ill 


^   la  ,1 

m 


IM' 


m 


104 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


how  far  to  conveyance  from  race  to  race,  and  how  far  to 
ancestral  inheritance.  Here  it  has  only  to  be  maintained 
that  it  was  not  originally  an  arbitra'  nd  meaningless 
custom,  but  the  working  out  of  a  priuoiple.*  The  plain 
statement  by  the  modern  Zulus  fits  with  the  hints  to  be 
gained  from  the  superstition  and  folklore  of  other  races,  to 
connect  the  notions  and  practices  as  to  sneezing  with  the 
ancient  and  savage  doctrine  of  pervading  and  invading 
spirits,  considered  as  good  or  evil,  and  treated  accordingly. 
The  lingering  survivals  of  the  quaint  old  formulas  in  modern 
Europe  seem  an  unconscious  record  of  the  time  when  the 
explanation  of  sneezing  had  not  yet  been  given  over  to 
physiology,  but  was  still  in  the  "  theological  stage." 

There  is  current  in  Scotland  the  belief  that  the  Picts, 
to  whom  local  legend  attributes  buildings  of  prehistoric 
antiquity,  bathed  their  foundation-stones  with  human 
blc!>d ;  and  legend  even  tells  that  St.  Columba  found  it 
necessary  to  bury  St.  Oran  alive  beneath  the  foundation  of 
his  monastery,  in  order  to  propitiate  the  spirits  of  the  soil 
who  demolished  by  night  what  was  built  during  the  day. 
So  late  as  1843,  in  Germany,  when  a  new  bridge  was  built 
at  Halle,  a  notion  was  abroad  among  the  people  that  a  child 
was  wanted  to  be  built  into  the  foundation.  These  ideas  of 
church  or  wall  or  bridge  wanting  human  blood  or  an  im- 
mured victim  to  make  the  foundation  steadfast,  are  not  only 
widespread  in  European  folklore,  but  local  chronicle  or  tra- 
dition asserts  them  as  matter  of  historical  fact  in  district 
after  district.  Thus,  when  the  broken  dam  of  the  Nogat 
had  to  be  repaired  in  1463,  the  peasants,  on  the  advice  to 
throw  in  a  living  man,  are  said  to  have  made  a  beggar  drunk 
and  buried  him  there.  Thuringian  legend  declares  that  to 
make  the  castle  of  Liebenstein  fast  and  impregnable,  a  child 
was  bought  for  hard  money  of  its  mother  and  walled  in.     It 


n;„ 


I 


I 


'  The  cases  in  which  a  sneeze  is  interpreted  under  special  conditions,  as  with 
reference  to  right  and  left,  early  morning,  etc.  (see  Plutarch.  De  Genio 
Socratis,  etc.),  are  not  considered  here,  as  they  belong  to  ordinary  omeu< 
divination. 


Iim- 
)nly 
Itra- 
trict 
)gat 

to 
ink 

to 
bild 

It 

Iwith 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


105 


i 


was  eating  a  cake  while  the  masons  were  at  work,  the  story 
goes,  and  it  cried  out,  *'  Mother,  I  see  thee  still ;  "  then 
later,  "  Mother,  I  see  thee  a  little  still ;  "  and,  as  they  put 
in  the  last  stone,  "  Mother,  now  I  see  thee  no  more."     The 
wall  of  Copenhagen,  legend  says,  sank  as  fast  as  it  was 
built ;  so  they  took  an  innocent  little  girl,  set  her  on  a  chair 
at  a  table  with  toys  and  eatables,  and,  as  she  played  and  ate, 
twelve  master-masons  closed  a  vault  over  her ;  then,  with 
clanging  music,  the  wall  was  raised,  and  stood  firm  ever 
after.     Thus  Italian  legend  tells  of  the  bridge  of  Aria,  that 
fell  in  and  fell  in  till  they  walled  in  the  master-builder's 
wife,  and  she  spoke  her  dying  curse  that  the  bridge  should 
tremble  like  a  flower-stalk  henceforth.     The  Slavonic  chiefs 
founding  Detinez,  according  to  old  heathen  custom,  sent  out 
men  to  take  the  first  boy  they  met  and  bury  him  in  the 
foundation.     Servian  legend  tells  how  three  brothers  com- 
bined to  build  the  fortress  of  Skadra  (Scutari) ;  but,  year 
after  year,  the  demon  (vila)  razed  by  night  what  the  three 
hundred  masons  built  by  day.     The  fiend  must  be  appeased 
by  a  human  sacrifice,  the  first  of  the  three  wives  who  should 
come  bringing  food  to  the  workmen.     All  three  brothers 
swore  to  keep  the  dreadful  secret  from  their  wives  ;  but  the 
two  eldest  gave  traitorous  warning  to  theirs,  and  it  was  the 
youngest  brother's  wife  who  came  unsuspecting,  and  they 
built  her  in.     But  she  entreated  that  an  opening  should  be 
left  for  her  to  suckle  her  baby  through,  and  for  a  twelve- 
month it  was  brought.     To  this  day,  Servian  wives  visit  the 
tomb  of  the  good  mother,  still  marked  by  a  stream  of  water 
which  trickles,  milky  with  lime,   down  the  fortress   wall. 
Lastly,  there  is  our  own  legend  of  Vortigern,  who  could  not 
finish  his  tower  till  the  foundation-stone  was  wetted  with 
the  blood  of  a  child  born  of  a  mother  without  a  father.     As 
is  usual  in  the  history  of  sacrifice,  we  hear  of  substitutes  for 
such  victims  ;  empty  coffins  walled  up  in  Germany,  a  lamb 
walled  in  under  the  altar  in  Denmark  to  make  the  church 
stand  fast,  and  the  churchyard  in  like  manner  hanselled  by 
burying  a  live  horse  first.     In  modern  Greece  an  evident 


r3  i^l 


.Kl 


106 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


ill 


;.,! 


:'       ,     i 


I,  t 
1 1 


relic  of  the  idea  survives  in  the  superstition  that  the  first 
passer-by  after  a  foundation-stone  is  laid  will  die  within  the 
year,  wherefore  the  masons  will  compromise  the  debt  by 
killing  a  lamb  or  a  black  cock  on  the  stone.  With  much 
the  same  idea  German  legend  tells  of  the  bridge-building 
fiend  cheated  of  his  promised  fee,  a  soul,  by  the  device  of 
making  a  cock  run  first  across  ;  and  thus  German  folklore 
sa3's  it  is  well,  before  entering  a  new  house,  to  let  a  cat  or 
dog  run  in.^  From  all  this  it  seems  that,  with  due  allow- 
ance for  the  idea  having  passed  into  an  often-repeated  and 
varied  mythic  theme,  yet  written  and  unwritten  tradition  do 
preserve  the  memory  of  a  bloodthirsty  barbaric  rite,  which 
not  only  really  existed  in  ancient  times,  but  lingered  long  in 
European  history.  If  now  we  look  to  less  cultured  countries, 
we  shall  find  the  rite  carried  on  in  our  own  day  with  a 
distinctly  religious  purpose,  either  to  propitiate  the  earth- 
spirits  with  a  victim,  or  to  convert  the  soul  of  the  victim 
himself  into  a  protecting  demon. 

In  Africa,  in  Galam,  a  boy  and  girl  used  to  be  buried 
alive  before  the  great  gate  of  the  city  to  make  it  impreg- 
nable, a  practice  once  executed  on  a  large  scale  by  a  Bam- 
barra  tyrant;  while  in  Great  Bassam  and  Yarriba  such 
sacrifices  were  usual  at  the  foundation  of  a  house  or  village.^ 
In  Polynesia,  Ellis  heard  of  the  custom,  instanced  by  the 
fact  that  the  central  pillar  of  one  of  the  tem})les  at  Maeva 
was  planted  upon  the  body  of  a  human  victim.'*     In  Borneo, 


11. 


li^'^ 


'  W.  Scott,  •  Minstrelsy  of  Scottish  Border  ; '  Forbes  Leslie,  •  Early  Races 
of  Scotland,'  vol.  i.  p.  149,  487  ;  Grimm,  'Deutsche  Mythologie,'  p.  972. 
1095  ;  Bastian,  'Meusch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  92,  407,  vol.  iii.  p.  105,  112;  Bowring, 
'Servian  Popular  Poetry,'  p.  64.  A  review  of  the  First  Edition  of  the  present 
work  in  'Nature,'  June  15,  1871,  contains  the  following  :— "  It  is  not,  for  ex- 
ample, many  years  since  the  present  Lord  Leigh  was  accused  of  having  built 
an  obnoxious  person— one  account,  if  we  remember  right,  said  eight  obnoxious 
persons — into  the  foundation  of  a  bridge  at  Stoueleigh.  Of  course  so  jirepos- 
terous  a  charge  carried  on  its  face  its  own  sufficient  refutation  ;  but  tlie  fact 
that  it  was  brought  at  all  is  a  singular  instance  of  the  almost  incredible 
vitality  of  old  traditions." 

2  Waitz,  vol.  ii.  p.  197. 

■  Ellis,  'Polyn.  Res.'  vol.  i.  p.  346  ;  Tyerman  and  Bennet,  vol.  ii.  p.  39. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


107 


among  the  Milanau  Dayaks,  at  the  erection  of  the  largest 
house  a  deep  hole  was  dug  to  receive  the  first  post,  which 
was  then  suspended  over  it ;  a  slave  girl  was  placed  in  the 
excavation ;    at   a  signal   the  lashings  were  cut,  and  the 
enormous  timber  descended,  crushing  the  girl  to  death,  a 
sacrifice  to  tliG  spirits.     St.  John  saw  a  milder  form  of  the 
rite  performed,  when  the  chief  of  the  Quop  Daj'aks  set  up  a 
flagstaff  near  his  house,  a  chicken  being  thrown  in  to  be 
crushed  by  the  descending  pole.^     More  cultured  nations  of 
Southern  Asia  have  carried  on  into  modern  ages  the  rite  of 
the  foundation-sacrifice.     A  17th  century  account  of  Japan 
mentions  the  belief  there  that  a  wall  laid  on  the  body  of  a 
willing  human  victim  would  be  secure  from  accident;  accord- 
ingly, when  a  great  wall  was  to  be  built,  some  wretched 
slave  would  offer  himself  as  foundation,  lying  down  in  the 
trench  to  be  crushed  by  the  heavy  stones  lowered  upon  him.' 
When  the  gate  of  the  new  city  of  Tavoy,  in  Tenasserim,  was 
built,  perhaps  twenty  years  ago.  Mason  was  told  by  an  eye- 
witness that  a  criminal  was  put  in  each  post-hole  to  become 
a  protecting  demon.     Thus  it  appears  that  such  stories  as 
that  of  the  human  victims  buried  for  spirit- watchers  under 
the  gates  of  Mandalay,  of  the   queen  who   was   drowned 
in   a  Birmese   reservoir  to    make   the   dyke   safe,   of  the 
hero  whose  divided  body  was  buried  under  the  fortress  of 
Th.  tung  to  make  it  impregnable,  are  the  records,  whether 
in  historical  or  mythical  form,  of  the  actual  customs  of  the 


lie 


'  St.  John,  'Far  East,'  vol.  i.  p.  46  ;  see  Bastian,  vol.  ii.  p.  407.  I  am 
indebted  to  Mr.  R.  K.  Douglas  for  a  perfect  example  of  one  meaning  of  the 
foumlation-sacriflce,  from  the  Chinese  book,  '  Yiih  hea  ke' ('Jewelled  Casket 
of  Divination')  :  "Before  beginning  to  build,  the  workmen  should  sacrifice 
to  the  gods  of  the  neighbourhood,  of  the  earth  and  wood.  Should  the  car- 
penters be  very  apprehensive  of  the  building  falling,  they,  when  fixing  a  post, 
should  take  something  living  and  put  it  beneath,  and  lovirer  the  post  on  it, 
and  to  liberate  [the  evil  influences]  they  should  strike  tbe  post  with  an  axe 

and  repeat — 

'  It  is  well,  it  is  well, 
May  those  who  live  within 
Be  ever  warm  and  well  fed.'  ** 


H  li  111 


*  CaroD,  'Japan,'  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  623. 


t  1 
11 ;(  ; 


1'l^^fl 


■if" 


IV?':: 


108 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


land.^  Within  our  own  dominion,  when  Rajah  Sala  Byn« 
was  building  the  fort  of  Sialkot  in  the  Punjaub,  the  founda- 
tion of  the  south-east  bastion  gave  way  so  repeatedly  that 
he  had  recourse  to  a  soothsayer,  who  assured  him  that  it 
would  never  stand  until  the  blood  of  an  only  son  was  shed 
there,  wherefore  the  only  son  of  a  widow  was  sacrificed.' 
It  is  thus  plain  that  hideous  rites,  of  which  Europe  has 
scarcely  kept  up  more  than  the  dim  memory,  have  held  fast 
their  ancient  practice  and  meaning  in  Africa,  Polynesia,  and 
Asia,  among  races  who  represent  in  grade,  if  not  in  chro- 
nology, earlier  stages  of  civilization. 

When  Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  the  *  Pirate,'  tells  of  Bryce  the 
pedlar  refusing  to  help  Mordaunt  to  save  the  shipwrecked 
sailor  from  drowning,  and  even  remonstrating  with  him  on 
the  rashness  of  such  a  deed,  he  states  an  old  superstition  of 
the  Shetlanders.  "  Are  you  mad  ?  "  says  the  pedlar  ;  "  you 
that  have  lived  sae  lang  in  Zetland,  to  risk  the  saving  of  a 
drowning  man  ?  Wot  ye  not,  if  you  bring  him  to  life  again, 
he  will  be  sure  to  do  you  some  capital  injury  ?  "  Were  this 
inhuman  thought  noticed  in  this  one  district  alone,  it  might 
be  fancied  to  have  had  its  rise  in  some  local  idea  now  no  longer 
to  be  explained.  But  when  mentions  of  similar  superstitions 
are  collected  among  the  St.  Kilda  islanders  and  the  boatmen 
of  the  Danube,  am.ong  French  and  English  sailors,  and  even 
out  of  Europe  and  among  less  civilized  races,  we  cease  to 
think  of  local  fancies,  but  look  for  some  widely  accepted 
belief  of  the  lower  culture  to  account  for  such  a  state  of 
things.  The  Hindu  does  not  save  a  man  from  drowning  in 
the  sacred  Ganges,  and  the  islanders  of  the  Malay  archipelago 
share  the  cruel  notion.^  Of  all  people  the  rude  Kamchadals 
have  the  prohibition  in  the  most  remarkable  form.  They 
hold  it  a  great  fault,  says  Kracheninnikoff,  to  save  a  drown- 


»  Bastinn,  '  Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  pp.  193,  214  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  91,  270  ;  vol.  iii. 
p.  16.     Rdberts,  'Oriental  Illustrations  uf  Scrii)turcs,'  p.  283  (Ceylon). 

'  Ba.>stian,  'Menscli,'  vol.  iii.  p.  107.  A  motlurn  Arnaut  story  is  given  by 
Prof.  Liebrucht  in  '  Philologus,'  vol.  xxiii.  (1865)  p.  682. 

•  Bftstian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  iii.  p.  210     Ward,  'Hindoos,'  vol.  xi,  p.  318. 


4 


to 
3d 


lU 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


109 


ing  man;  he  who  delivers  him  will  be  drowned  himself.^ 
Steller's  account  is  more  extraordinar}',  and  probably  applies 
only  to  cases  where  the  victim  is  actually  drowning :  he  says 
that  if  a  man  fell  by  chance  into  the  water,  it  was  a  great 
sin  for  him  to  get  out,  for  as  he  had  been  destined  to  drown 
he  did  wrong  in  not  drowning,  wherefore  no  one  would  let 
him  into  his  dwelling,  nor  speak  to  him,  nor  give  him  food 
or  a  wife,  but  he  was  reckoned  for  dead  ;  and  even  when  a 
man  fell  into  the  water  while  others  were  standing  by,  far 
from  helping  him  out,  they  would  drown  him  by  force.  Now 
these  savages,  it  appears,  avoided  volcanoes  becavise  of  the 
spirits  who  live  there  and  cook  their  food;  for  a  like  reason, 
they  held  it  a  sin  to  bathe  in  hot  springs  ;  and  they  believed 
with  fear  in  a  fisli-like  spirit  of  the  sea,  whom  they  called 
Mitgk.^  This  spiritualistic  belief  among  the  Kamchadals  is, 
no  doubt,  the  key  to  their  superstition  as  to  rescuing 
drowning  men.  There  is  even  to  be  found  in  modern 
European  superstition,  not  only  the  practice,  but  with  it  a 
lingering  survival  of  its  ancient  spiritualistic  signiticance. 
In  Bohemia,  a  recent  account  (18G4)  says  that  the  fishermen 
do  not  venture  to  snatch  a  drowning  man  from  the  waters. 
They  fear  that  the  "Waterman  "  (i.  e.,  water-demon)  would 
take  away  their  luck  in  fishing,  and  drown  themselves  at  the 
first  opportunity.'  This  explanation  of  the  prejudice 
against  saving  the  water-spirit's  victim  may  be  confirmed  by 
a  mass  of  evidence  from  various  districts  of  the  world. 
Thus,  in  discussing  the  doctrine  of  sacrifice,  it  will  appear 
that  the  usual  manner  of  making  an  offering  to  a  well,  river, 
lake,  or  sea,  is  simply  to  cast  property,  cattle,  or  ai3u  into 
the  water,  which  personally  or  by  its  in-dwelling  spirit  takes 
possession  of  them.*  That  the  accidental  drowning  of  a 
man  is  held  to  be  such  a  seizure,  savage  and  civilized  folk- 
lore show  by  many  examples.     Among  the  Sioux  Indians, 

•  Krncheniimikow,  '  Descr.  du  Kamchatka,  Voy.  en  Sib^rie,'  vol.  iii.  p.  72. 
«  Stfcller,  '  Kanitschatka,'  pp.  265,  274. 

•  J.  V.  Grohiuunn,  'Aberglaubeu  und  Gebriiuche  aus  Bohmen,*  p.  12. 

•  Chap.  XVin. 


I  I 


I:' 


Ml 


I!'     .     I 


110 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


it  is  Unk-tahe  the  water-monster  that  drowns  his  victims  in 
flood  or  rapid  ;  ^  in  New  Zealand  huge  supernatural  reptile- 
monsters,  called  Taniwha,  live  in  river-bends,  and  those  who 
are  drowned  are  said  to  be  pulled  under  by  them;^  the 
Siamese  fears  the  Pniik  or  water-spirit  that  seizes  bathers 
and  drags  them  under  to  his  dwelling ;  ^  in  Slavonic  lands 
it  is  Topielec  (the  ducker)  by  whom  men  are  always 
drowned ;  *  when  some  one  is  drowned  in  Germany,  people 
recollect  the  religion  of  their  ancestors,  and  say,  **  The 
river-spirit  claims  his  yearly  sacrifice,"  or,  more  simply, 
"  The  nix  has  taken  him :  "• — 

"  Ich  glaube,  die  Wellen  verschlingen. 
Am  Ende  Fischer  und  Kahn ; 
Und  das  hat  mit  ihrem  Singen 
Die  Lorelei  gethan." 

From  this  point  of  view  it  is  obvious  that  to  save  a  sinking 
man  is  to  snatch  a  victim  from  the  very  clutches  of  the 
water-spirit,  a  rash  defiance  of  deity  which  would  hardly  pass 
unavenged.  In  the  civilized  world  the  rude  old  theological 
conception  of  drowning  has  long  been  superseded  by  physi- 
cal explanation ;  and  the  prejudice  against  rescue  from 
such  a  death  may  have  now  almost  or  altogether 
disappeared.  But  archaic  ideas,  drifted  on  into  modern 
folklore  and  poetry,  still  bring  to  our  view  an  apparent 
connexion  between  the  primitive  doctrine  and  the  surviving 
custom. 

As  the  social  development  of  the  world  goes  on,  the 
weightiest  thoughts  and  actions  may  dwindle  to  mere 
survival.  Original  meaning  dies  out  gradually,  each  gene- 
ration leaves  fewer  and  fewer  to  bear  it  in  mind,  till  it  falls 
out  of  popular  memory,  and  in  after-days  ethnography  has 

»  Eastman,  'Dacotah.'p.  118,  125. 
'  R.  Taylor,  '  New  Zealand,'  p.  48. 

•  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  iii.  p.  34. 

•  HanuBch,  '  Wissenschaft  des  Slawischen  Mythus,'  p.  299. 

•  Grimm,  'Deutsche  Myth.'  p.  462. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


HI 


to  attempt,  more  or  less  successfully,  to  restore  it  by  piecing 
together  lines  of  isolated  or  forgotten  facts.  Children's 
sports,  popular  sajdngs,  absurd  customs,  may  be  practically 
unimportant,  but  are  not  philosophically  insignificant,  bear- 
ing as  they  do  on  some  of  the  most  instructive  phases  of 
early  culture.  Ugly  and  cruel  superstitions  may  prove  to  be 
relics  of  primitive  barbarism,  for  in  keeping  up  such  Man  is 
like  Shakspeare's  fox, 

"  Who,  ne'er  so  tame,  so  cherish'd,  and  lock'd  up, 
Will  haye  a  wild  trick  of  his  anceston.** 


iV 

I 

I. 

I 


las 


ki 

'II  i 


i! 


CHAPTER    IV. 

SURVIVAL    m    CULTURE  {continued). 

Occult  Sciences — Magical  powers  attributed  by  higher  to  lower  races — Magicai 
processes  based  on  Association  of  Ideas  —Omens — Augury,  etc. — Oiieiro- 
mancy — Haruspication,  Scajiulimancy,  Ciiironiancy,  etc. — Cartomancy, 
etc. — Ehahdoniancy,  Dactyliomancy,  Coscinomancy,  etc. — Astrology — 
Intellectual  conditions  accounting  for  the  pfrsisteiice  of  Ma r;ic— Survival 
passes  into  Revival — Witchcraft,  originating  in  savage  culture,  continues 
in  barbaric  civilization  ;  its  decline  in  early  mcdiaival  Europe  followed  by 
revival ;  its  practices  and  counter-practices  belong  to  eail'cr  culture — 
Spiritualism  has  its  source  in  early  stages  of  culture,  in  close  connexion 
with  witchcraft — Sitirit-rapping  and  S])irit-writing — Rising  in  the  air 
— Performances  of  tied  mediums— Practical  bearing  of  tho  study  of 
Survival. 


!.  >h 


it 


I    ]| 


In  examining  the  survival  of  opinions  in  the  midst  of 
conditions  of  society  becoming  gradually  estranged  from 
them,  and  tending  at  last  to  supi)ress  them  altogether,  much 
may  be  learnt  from  the  history  of  one  of  the  most  pernicious 
delusions  that  ever  vexed  mankind,  the  belief  in  Magic. 
Looking  at  Occult  Science  from  this  ethnographic  point  of 
view,  I  shall  instance  some  of  its  branches  as  illustrating 
the  course  of  intellectual  culture.  Its  place  in  history  is 
briefly  this.  It  belongs  in  its  main  principle  to  the  lowest 
known  stages  of  civilization,  and  the  lower  races,  who  have 
not  partaken  largely  of  the  education  of  the  world,  still 
maintain  it  in  vigour.  From  this  level  it  may  be  traced 
upward,  much  of  the  savage  art  holding  its  place  sub- 
stantially unchanged,  and  many  new  practices  being  in 
course  of  time  developed,  while  both  the  older  and  newer 
developments  have  lasted  on  more  or  less  among  modern 
cultured  nations.     But  during  the  ages  in  which  progressive 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


113 


of 


of 

ng 


ill 
ed 

r 

lin 
ler 

rn 


races  have  been  learning  to  submit  their  opinions  to  closei* 
and  closer  experimental  tests,  occult  science  has  been  break- 
ing down  into  the  condition  of  a  survival,  in  ■which  state  we 
mostly  find  it  among  ourselves. 

The  modern  educated  world,  rejecting  occult  science  as  a 
contemptible  superstition,  has  practically  committed  itself 
to  the  opinion  that  magic  belongs  to  a  lower  level  of 
civilization.  It  is  very  instructive  to  find  the  soundness  of 
this  judgment  undesignedly  confirmed  by  nations  whose 
education  has  not  advanced  far  enough  to  destroy  their 
belief  in  magic  itself.  In  any  country  an  isolated  or  out- 
lying race,  the  lingering  survivor  of  an  older  nationality,  is 
liable  to  the  reputation  of  sorcery.  It  is  thus  with  the 
Lavas  of  Birma,  supposed  to  be  the  broken-down  remains 
of  an  ancient  cultured  race,  and  dreaded  as  man-tigers ;  ^ 
and  with  the  Budas  of  Abyssinia,  who  are  at  once  the  smiths 
and  potters,  sorcerers  and  werewolves,  of  their  district."  But 
the  usual  and  suggestive  state  of  things  is  that  nations  who 
believe  with  the  sincerest  terror  in  the  reality  of  the  magic 
art,  at  the  same  time  cannot  shut  their  eyes  to  the  fact  that 
it  more  essentially^  belongs  to,  and  is  more  thorougldy  at 
home  among,  races  less  civilized  than  themselves.  The 
Malays  of  the  Peninsula,  who  have  adopted  Mohammedan 
religion  and  civilization,  have  this  idea  of  the  lower  tribes 
of  the  land,  tribes  more  or  less  of  their  own  race,  but  who  have 
remained  in  their  early  savage  condition.  The  Malays  have 
enchanters  of  their  own,  but  consider  them  inferior  to  the 
sorcerers  or  poyangs  belonging  to  the  rude  Mintira ;  to  these 
they  will  resort  for  the  cure  of  diseases  and  the  working  of 
misfortune  and  death  to  their  enemies.  It  is,  in  fact,  the 
best  protection  the  Mintira  have  against  their  stronger 
Malay  neighbours,  that  these  are  careful  not  to  ofiond  them 
for  fear  of  their  powers  of  magical  revenge.  The  Jakuns, 
again,  are  a  rude  and  wild  race,  whom  the  Malays  despise 
as  infidels  and  little  higher  than  animals,  but  whom  at  the 

*  Biistian,  '  Ocstl.  Asieii,'  vol.  i.  p.  119. 

'■'  '  Lifo  of  Nttth.  Pearct','  ed.  by  J.  J.  Halls,  vol.  i.  p.  286. 

VOL.    I.  I 


it 

n 


<  ! 


114 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


1  y 
i  \ 


el 


.?.  r 


same  time  they  fear  extremelj-.     To  the  Malay  the  Jakun 
seems  a  sui)eriiatural  being,  skilled  in  divination,  sorceiy, 
and  fascination,  able  to  do  evil  or  good  according  to  his 
pleasure,   whose   blessing  will   be   followed    by  the  most 
fortunate  success,  and  his  curse  by  the  most  dreadful  con- 
sequences ;  he  can  turn  towards  the  house  of  an  enemy,  at 
whatever  distance,  and  beat  two  sticks  together  till  that 
enemy  will  fall  sick  and  die ;  he  is  skilled  in  herbal  physic ; 
he  has   the   i)ower   of  charming  the  fiercest  wild  beasts. 
Thus  it  is  that  the  Malays,  though  they  despise  the  Jakuns, 
refrain,  in  man}'  circumstances,  from  ill-treating  them.^     In 
India,  in  long-past  ages,  the  dominant  Aryans  described  the 
rude  indigenes  of  the  land  by  the  epithets  of  "  possessed  of 
magical  powers,"  "  changing  their  shape  at  will."^     To  this 
day,  Hindus  settled  in  Chota-Nagpur  and  Singbhum  firmly 
believe  that  the  Mundas  have  powers  of  witchcraft,  whereby 
they  can  transform  themselves  into  tigers  and  other  beasts 
of  prey  to  devour  their  enemies,  and  can  witch  away  the 
lives  of  man  and  beast ;    it  is  to   the   wildest  and  most 
savage  of  the  tribe  that  such  powers  are  generally  ascribed.' 
In    Southern    India,    again,    we   hear    in    past    times  of 
Ilinduized  Dravidians,  the  Sudras  of  Canara,  living  in  fear 
of  the  dsemoniacal  powers  of  the  slave-caste  below  them.* 
In  our  own   day,  among  Dravidian  tribes  of  the  Nilagiri 
district,  the  Todas  and  Badagas  are  in  mortal  dread  of  the 
Kurumbas,    despised    and    wretched    forest    outcasts,    but 
gifted,  it  is  believed,  with  powers  of  destroying  men  and 
animals    and   property  by  witchcraft.®     Northern    Europe 
brings  the  like  contrast  sharply  into  view.     The  Finns  and 
Lapps,  whose    low  Tatar  barbarism  was  characterized  by 
sorcery  such  as  flourishes  still  among  their  Siberian  kins* 


;rv 


liljv. 


'  'Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol,  i.  p.  328;  vol.  ii.  p.  273;  see  vol.  iv.  p.  425. 
'  Muir,  •  Sanskrit  Texts,'  part ''.  p.  435. 
»  Dalton,  'Kols,'  in  'Tr.  K.l'   N,-c.'  vol.  vi   p.  6  ;  see  p.  16. 
'  Jas.  Gardner,  'Faiths  of  the  Wcirld,'  s.  v.  'Exorcism.' 
»  Shortt,  'Tribes  of  Neilgherries,'  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soe.'  vol.  vii.  pp.  247,  277; 
Sir  AV.  Elliot  in  'Trans.  Congress  of  Prehistoric  Archaeology,'  18«8,  p.  253. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


115 


folk,  were  accordingly  objects  of  superstitious  fear  to  their 
Scandinavian  neighbours  and  opi)ressors.     In  the  middle 
ages  the  name  of  Finn  was,  as  it  still  remains  among  sea- 
faring men,  equivalent  to  that  of  sorcerer,  while  Lapland 
witches  had  a  European  celei)rity  as  practitioners  of  the 
black  art.   Ages  after  the  Finns  had  risen  in  the  social  scale, 
the  Lapps  retained  much  of  their  old  half-savage  habit  of 
life,  and  with  it  naturally  their  witchcraft,  so  that  even  the 
magic-gifted  Finns  revered  the  occult  powers  of  a  people 
more  barbarous  than  themselves.     Riilis  writes  thus  early 
in  the  present  century:   "  There  are  still  sorcerers  in  Fin- 
land, but  the  skilfullest  of  them  believe  that  the  Lapps  far 
excel  them  ;  of  a  well-experienced  magician  they  sa}',  'That 
is   quite  a  Lapp,'  and  they  journey  to   Lapland  for  such 
knowledge."^     All  this  is  of  a  piece  with  the  survival  of 
such  ideas  among  the  ignorant  elsewhere  in  the  civilized 
world.     Many  a  white  man  in  the  West  Indies  and  Africa 
dreads     the    incantations    of    the    Obi-man,    and    Europe 
ascribes    powers   of   sorcery   to    despised    outcast    "  races 
maudites,"  Gypsies  and  Cagots.     To  turn  from  nations  to 
sects,  the  attitude  of  Protestants  to  Catholics  in  this  matter 
is  instructive.     It  was  remarked  in  Scotland  :    "  There  is 
one  opinion  which  many  of  them  entertain,  ....  that  a 
popish   priest  can  cast  out  devils  and  cure  madness,  and 
that    the  Presbyterian  clergy  have  no  such  power."      So 
Bourne  says  of  the  Church  of  England  clergy,  that  the 
vulgar  think  them  no   conjurors,    and   say  none   can  lay 
spirits  but  popish  priests.^     These  accounts  are  not  recent, 
but  in  Germany  the  same  state  of  things  appears  to  exist 
still.     Protestants  get  the  aid  of  Catholic  priests  and  monks 
to  help  them  against  witchcraft,  to  lay  ghosts,  consecrate 
herbs,  and  discover  thieves;^  thus  with  unconscious  irony 
judging  the  relation  of  Rome  toward  modern  civilization. 
The  principal  key  to  the  understanding  of  Occult  Science 

*  F.  Ruhs,  '  Finland,'  p.  296  ;  Bastian,  '  Mensch.'vol.  iii.  p.  202. 
«  Brand,  'Pop.  Ant.'  vol.  iii.  pp.  81-3  ;  see  313. 

•  Wuttke,  'Deutsche  Volksabei'glaube,'  p.  128  ;  see  239. 

I  2 


11 


Ml 


M\ 


*■    t 


!:h;i 


Mi 


'^£ 


116 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


is  to  consider  it  as  based  on  the  Association  of  Ideas,  a 
faculty  which  lies  at  the  very  foundation  of  human  reason, 
but  in  no  small  degree  of  human  unreason  also.  Man,  as 
yet  in  a  low  intellectual  condition,  having  come  to  associate 
in  thought  those  things  which  he  found  by  experience  to  be 
connected  in  fact,  proceeded  erroneousl}'  to  invert  this 
action,  and  to  conclude  that  association  in  thought  must 
involve  similar  connexion  in  reality.  He  thus  attempted 
to  discover,  to  foretell,  and  to  cause  events  by  means  of 
processes  which  we  can  now  see  to  have  only  an  ideal 
significance.  By  a  vast  mass  of  evidence  from  savage, 
barbaric,  and  civilized  life,  magic  arts  which  have  resulted 
from  thus  mistaking  an  ideal  for  a  real  connexion,  may  be 
clearly  traced  from  the  lower  culture  which  they  are  of,  to 
the  higher  culture  which  they  are  in.^  Such  are  the 
practices  whereby  a  distant  person  is  to  be  affected  by 
acting  on  something  closely  associated  with  him — his 
property,  clothes  he  has  worn,  and  above  all  cuttings  of  his 
hair  and  nails.  Not  only  do  savages  high  and  low  like  the 
Australians  and  Polynesinns,  and  barbarians  like  the  nations 
of  Guinea,  live  in  deadly  terror  of  this  spiteful  craft — not 
only  have  the  Parsis  their  sacred  ritual  prescribed  for  bury- 
ing their  cut  hair  and  nails,  lest  demons  and  sorcerers 
should  do  mischief  with  them,  but  the  fear  of  leavi.ig  such 
clippings  and  parings  about  lest  their  former  owner  should 
be  harmed  through  them,  has  b}'  no  means  died  out  of 
European  folklore,  and  the  German  peasant,  during  the 
days  between  his  child's  birth  and  baptism,  objects  to  lend 
anything  out  of  the  house,  lest  witchcraft  should  be  worked 
through  it  on  the  yet  unconsecrated  baby.^  As  the  negro 
fetish-man,  when  his  patient  does  not  come  in  person,  can 


m  i 


'  For  an  examination  of  imineious  mafrical  arts,  mostly  coming  under  thig 
category,  see  '  Early  History  of  Mankind,'  chaps,  vi.  and  x. 

'  Staiibridge,  '  Abor.  of  Victoria,'  in  'Tr.  Eth  Soc' vol.  i.  p.  299  ;  Elli.s, 
'Polyn.  Ees,'  vol.  i.  p.  364;  J.  L.  Wilson,  'W.  Africa,'  p.  215  ;  Spiegel, 
*Avesta,'vol.  i.  p.  124;  Wuttke,  '  Dercsclie  Volksaberglaube,'  p,  195;  general 
references  in  'Early  History  of  Manknid,'  p.  129. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


117 


divine  by  means  '  his  dirt}'  cloth  or  cap  instead,^  so  the 
modern  clairvoyaui,  professes  to  feel  sympathetically  the 
sensations  of  a  distant  person,  if  communication  be  made 
thi'ough  a  lock  of  his  hair  or  any  object  that  has  been  in 
contact  with  him.^  The  simple  idea  of  joining  two  objects 
with  a  cord,  taking  for  granted  that  this  communication  will 
establish  connexion  or  carry  influence,  has  been  worked  out 
in  various  ways  in  the  world.  In  Australia,  the  native  doctor 
fastens  one  end  of  a  string  to  the  ailing  part  of  the  patient's 
body,  and  by  sucking  at  the  other  end  pretends  to  draw  out 
blood  for  his  relief.^  In  Orissa,  the  Jeypore  witch  lets 
down  a  ball  of  thread  through  her  enemy's  roof  to  reach  his 
body,  that  by  putting  the  other  end  in  her  own  mouth  she 
may  suck  his  blood.*  "When  a  reindeer  is  sacrificed  at  a  sick 
Ostyak's  tent-door,  the  patient  holds  in  his  hand  a  cord 
attached  to  the  victim  offered  for  his  benefit."  Greek 
history  shows  a  similar  idea,  when  the  citizens  of  Ephesus 
carried  a  rope  seven  furlongs  from  their  walls  to  the  temple 
of  Artemis,  thus  to  place  themselves  under  her  safeguard 
against  the  attack  of  Croesus ;  and  in  the  yet  more  striking 
story  of  the  Kylonians,  who  tied  a  cord  to  the  statue  of  the 
goddess  when  they  quitted  the  asylum,  and  clung  to  it 
for  protection  as  they  crossed  unhallowed  ground ;  but  by 
ill-fate  the  cord  of  safety  broke  and  they  were  mercilessly 
put  to  death.^  And  in  our  own  day,  Buddhist  priests  in 
solemn  ceremony  put  themselves  in  communication  with  a 
sacred  relic,  by  each  taking  hold  of  a  long  thread  fastened 
near  it  and  around  the  temple.'^ 

Magical  arts   in  wliich   the  connexion  is  that  of  mere 
analogy  or  symbolism  are  endlessly  numerous  throughout 


I 


thig 
nera] 


>  Burton,  '  W,  and  W.  from  West  Africa,'  p.  411. 
'  W.  Gregory,  'Letters  on  Animal  Magnetism,' p.  128. 
'  Eyre,   •Australia,'  vol  ii.  p.  361 ;  Collins,  'New  South  Waloa,'  roL  L 
pp.  56],  594. 

*  Shortt,  in  'Tr.  Eth.  See' vol.  vl.  p.  278. 

*  Bastian,  'Mensch.'  vol.  iii.  p.  117. 

*  See  Grote,  vol.  iii.  pp.  113,  351. 

'  Hardy,  *  Eastern  Monaclusm,'  p.  241. 


'/  -< 


'! 


118 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


I'l 


1J 


I,  • 


.4 


the  course  of  civilization.     Their  common  theory  may  be 
readily  made  out  from  a  few  typical  cases,  and  thpiice  applied 
confidently   to   the    general   mass.      The    Australian   will 
observe  the  track  of  an  insect  near  a  grave,  to  ascertain  the 
direction  whore  the  sorcerer  is  to  be  found,  by  whose  craft 
the  man  died.^     The  Zulu  may  be  seen  chewing  a  bit  of 
"wood,  in  order,  by  this  symbolic  act,  to  soften  the  heart  of 
the  man  he  wants  to  buy  oxen  from,  or  of  the  woman  he 
wants  for  a  wife.^     The  Obi-man  of  West  Africa  makes  his 
packet  of  grave-dust,  blood,  and  bones,  that  this  suggestive 
representation  of  death  may  bring  his  enemy  to  the  grave.' 
The  Khoud  sets  up  the  iron  arrow  of  the  War-god  in  a 
basket  of  rice,  and  judges  fri^m  its  standing  upright  that  war 
must  be  kept  up  also,  or  from  its  falling  that  the   quarrel 
may  be  let  foil  too ;  and  wlien  he  tortures  human  victims 
sacrificed  to  the  Earth-goddess,  he  rejoices  to  see  them  shed 
plentiful  tears,  which  betoken  copious  showers  to  fall  upon 
his  land.*     These  are  fair  examples  of  the  symbolic  magic 
of  the  lower  races,  and  thej'  are   fully  rivalled  in  supersti- 
tions which  stiJl  ]iold  their  ground  in  Europe.     With  quaint 
simplicity,   the   «ierman  cottager    declares  that    if   a  dog 
howls  looking  downward,  it  portends  a  death ;  but  if  upward, 
then  a  recovery  from  sickness.^     Locks  must  be  opened  and 
bolts  drawn  in  a  dying  man's  house,  that  his  soul  may  not 
be  held  fast.'    The  Hessian  lad  thinks  that  he  may  escape  the 
conscription  by  carrying  a  baby-girl's  cap  in  his  pocket — a 
symbolic  way  of  repudiating  manhood.'''     Modern  Servians, 
dancing  and  singing,  lead  about  a  little  girl    dressed    in 
leaves  and  flowers,  and  pour  bowls  of  water  over  her  to 
make  the  rain   come.®     Sailors  becalmed  will  sometimes 


5 


I'lj^-' 


>  Oldfield,  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol,  iii.  p.  246. 
3  Grout,  '  Zulu-land,'  p.  181. 

3  See  sjieciinen  and  description  in  the  Christy  Museum. 
*  Miii'pherson,  'India,'  pp.  130,  363. 
«  Wuttkc,  '  Volksaberglaubo,'  p.  31. 

«  R.  Hunt,  '  Pop.  Rom.  of  W.  of  England,'  2nd  ser.  p.  165  ;  Brand,  'Pop. 
Ant.'  vol.  ii.  p.  231. 
»  Wuttke,  p.  100.  •  Grimm,  'D.  M.'  p.  660. 


n.4-. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CM 


RE 


11!) 


log 


md 
lot 


-a 

Ins, 

in 

to 

les 


wliistli.'  for  a  wind ;  but  in  ui  r  weather  they  hnte 
whistling  at  sea,  which  raises  a  wiiisdinjj,  giile.^  Fish, 
says  the  Cornishnian,  should  be  eaten  from  the  tail 
towards  the  head,  to  bring  the  other  fishes'  heads  towards 
the  shore,  for  eating  them  the  wrong  way  turns  them  from 
the  coast.^  He  who  has  cut  himself  should  rub  the 
knife  witli  fat,  and  as  it  dries,  the  wound  will  heal ;  this  is 
a  lingering  survival  from  days  when  recipes  for  sympatlu'tic 
ointment  were  to  be  f(Kuid  in  the  Phannacopu'ia.^  Fanciful 
as  these  notions  are,  it  sJiould  be  borne  in  mind  that  they 
come  fairly  under  definite  mental  law,  dcpemling  as  they  do 
on  a  principle  of  ideal  association,  of  which  we  can  quite 
understand  the  mental  action,  though  wo  deny  its  practical 
results.  The  clever  Lord  Chesterfield,  too  clever  to  under- 
stand folly,  may  again  be  cited  to  prove  this.  He  relates  in 
one  of  his  letters  that  the  king  had  been  ill,  and  that  people 
generally  expected  the  illness  to  be  fatal,  because  the  oldest 
lion  in  the  Tower,  about  the  king's  age,  had  just  died.  "  So 
wild  and  capricious  is  the  human  mind,"  he  exclaims,  by 
Avay  of  comment.  But  indeed  the  thought  was  neither  wild 
nor  capricious,  it  was  simply  such  an  argument  from  analogy 
as  the  educated  world  has  at  length  painfully  learnt  to  be 
worthless  ;  but  which,  it  is  not  too  much  to  declare,  would 
to  this  day  carry  considerable  weight  to  the  minds  of  four- 
fifths  of  the  human  race. 

A  glance  at  those  magical  arts  which  have  been  systema- 
tized into  pseudo-sciences,  shows  the  same  underlying 
principle.  The  art  of  taking  omens  from  seeing  and  meet- 
ing animals,  which  includes  augur}',  is  familiar  to  such 
savages  as  the  Tupis  of  Brazil  *  and  the  Dayaks  of  Borneo,' 
and  extends  upward  through  classic  civilization.  The 
Maoris  may  give  a  sample  of  the  character  of  its  rules  :  they 


U}\ 


Pop. 


'   I'-rMiul,  vol,  iii.  p.  240 
2  Hunt,  ibid.  p.  148 


8  Wuftke,  p.  16")  ;  Brand,  vol.  iii.  p.  305. 

*  Magiilhanes  de  Gandavo,  p.  125  ;  D'Orbigny,  vol.  ii.  p.  168. 

•  St.  John,  'Far  East,'  vol.  i.  p.  202  ;  Mourn.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  ii.  p.  357, 


i.\ 


1 1 


& 


120 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


: 


li      I 


hold  it  unlucky  if  an  owl  hoots  during  a  consultation,  but  a 
council  of  war  is  encouiiigod  by  prospect  of  victory  when  a 
hawk  flies  overhead ;  a  flight  of  birds  to  the  right  of  the 
war-sacrifice  is  propitious  if  the  villages  of  the  tribe  are  in 
that  quarter,  but  if  the  omen  is  in  the  enemy's  direction 
the  war  will  be  given  up.^     Compare  these  with  the  Tatar 
rules,    and  it  is  obvious  that   similar  thoughts   lie  at  the 
source  of  both.     Here  a  certain  little  owl's  cry  is  a  sound  of 
terror,  although  there  is  a  white  owl  which  is  lucky  ;  but  of 
all  birds  the  white  falcon  is  most  prophetic,  and  the  Kalmuk 
bows  his  thiuiks  for  the  good  omen  when  one  flies  by  on  the 
right,  but  seeing  one  on  the  left  turns  away  his  face  and 
expects  calamity.^     So  to  tlie  negro  of  Old  Calabar,  the  cry 
of  the  great  kingfisher  bode^  good  or  evil,  according  as  it  is 
heard  on  the  right  or  left.^    ilere  we  have  the  obvious  sym- 
bolism of  the  right  and  left  hand,  the  foreboding  of  ill  from 
the  owl's  doleful  note,  and  the  suggestion  of  victory  from 
the  fierce  swooi)ing  hawk,  a  thought  which  in  old  Europe 
made   the  bird  of  prej'  the  warrior's   omen  of  conquest. 
Meaning  of  the  same  kind  appears  in  the   *  Angang,'  the 
omens  taken  from  meeting  animals  and  people,  especially  on 
first  going  out  in  the  morning,  as  when  the  ancient  Slaves 
held  meeting  a  sick  man  or  an  old  woman  to  bode  ill-luck. 
Any  one  who  takes  the  trouble  to  go  into  this  subject  in 
detail,  and  to  study  the  classic,  mediaeval,  and  oriental  codes 
of  rules,  will  find  that  the  principle  of  direct  symbolism  still 
accounts  for  a  fair  proportion  of  them,  though  the  rest  may 
have  lost  their  early  significance,  or  may  have  been  originally 
due  to  some  other  reason,  or  may  have  been  arbitrarily 
invented  (as  a  considerable  proportion  of  such  devices  must 
necessarily  be)  to  fill  up  the  gaps  in  the  system.     It  is  still 
plain  to  us  why  the  omen  of  the  crow  should  be  different  on 
the  right  or  left  hand,  why  a  vulture  should  mean  rapacity, 
a  stork  concord,  a  pelican  piety,  an  ass  labour,  why  the 

*  Yate,  'New  Zealand,'  p.  90;  Polack,  vol.  i.  p.  248. 

'  Klc'inin,  •  Cultur-GesL'h.'  vol.  iii.  p.  202. 

■■  Burton,  '  Wit  and  Wisdom  from  West  Africa,'  p.  381. 


m 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


121 


a 

a 

he 
in 

on 
tar 
the 
lof 
tof 
imk 
the 
and 
cry 
it  is 
sym- 
from 
from 
irope 
uest. 
the 
ly  on 
laves 
luck, 
ct  in 
icodes 
1  still 
may 
inally 
rarily 
must 
s  still 
nt  on 
acity, 
y  the 


fierce  conquering  wolf  should  he  a  good  omen,  and  the  timid 
hare  a  had  one,  why  bees,  types  of  an  obedient  nation, 
should  be  lucky  to  a  king,  while  flies,  returning  however 
often  they  are  driven  oft',  should  be  signs  of  importunity  and 
impudence.*  And  as  to  the  general  piiucii)le  that  animals 
are  ominous  to  those  who  meet  them,  the  German  peasant 
who  says  a  tlock  of  sheep  is  luck  *  but  a  herd  of  swine  un- 
lucky to  meet,  and  the  Cornish  miner  who  turns  away  in 
horror  when  he  meets  an  old  woman  or  a  rabbit  on  his  way 
to  the  pit's  mouth,  are  to  this  day  keeping  up  relics  of  early 
savagery  as  genuine  as  any  Hint  implement  dug  out  of  a 
tumulus. 

The  doctrine  of  dreams,  attributed  as  they  are  by  the 
lower  and  middle  races  to  spiritual  intercourse,  belongs  in 
so  far  rather  to  religion  than  to  magic.  But  oneiromancy, 
the  art  of  taking  omens  frtuu  dreams  by  non-natural  interpre- 
tation, has  its  place  here  Of  the  leading  principle  of  such 
mystical  explanation,  no  better  types  could  be  chosen  than 
the  details  and  interpretations  of  Joseph's  dreams  (Genesis 
xxxvii.,  xL,  xli.),  of  the  sheaves  and  the  sun  and  moon  and 
eleven  stars,  of  the  vine  and  the  basket  of  meats,  of  the  lean 
and  fat  kine,  and  the  thin  and  full  corn-ears.  Oneiromancy, 
thus  symbolically  interpreting  the  things  seen  in  dreams,  is 
not  unknown  to  the  lower  races.  A  whole  Australian  tribe 
has  been  known  to  decamp  because  one  of  them  dreamt  of  a 
certahi  kind  of  owl,  which  dream  the  wise  men  declared  to 
forebode  an  attack  from  a  certain  other  tribe.^  Tbp  Kam- 
chadals.  whose  minds  ran  much  on  dretims,  had  special  in- 
terpretations of  some  ;  thus  to  dream  of  lice  or  dogs  be- 
tokened a  visit  of  Russian  travellers,  &c.'  The  Zulus,  ex- 
perience having  taught  them  the  fallacy  of  expecting  direct 
fulfilment  of  dreams,   have  in  some  cases  tried  to  mend 

*  See  Cornelius  Agrippa,  '  De  Occulta  Philosophia,'  i.  53;  'De  Vanitate 
Sclent.'  37;  Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  p.  1073;  Hanusch,  'Slaw.  Myth.'  p.  285; 
Brand,  vol.  iii.  pp.  184 — 227. 

*  Oldtield  in  'Tr.  Eth   Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  241. 

*  Steller,  '  Kamtschatlia,'  p.  279. 


ii  i' 


k^  1 


122 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


II    : 


Ml 


. 


■i' 


l«i.: 

'}!?-'• 


I'M 


matters  by  rusliing  to  the  otlier  extreme.  If  tliey  dream  of 
a  sick  man  that  he  is  dead,  and  thoy  see  the  earth  pom'ed 
into  the  grave,  and  hear  tlie  funeral  lamentation,  and  see  all 
his  things  destro\'ed,  then  they  say,  "  Because  we  have 
dreamt  of  his  death  he  will  not  die."  But  if  they  dream 
of  a  wedding-dance,  it  is  a  sign  of  a  funeral.  So  the 
Maoris  hold  that  a  kinsman  dronnit  of  as  dying  will  recover, 
but  to  see  him  well  is  a  sign  of  deatli.^  Both  races  thus 
work  ont,  by  the  same  crooked  logic  that  guided  our  own 
ancestors,  the  axiom  that  "  dreams  go  by  contraries."  It 
could  not  be  expected,  in  looking  over  the  long  lists  of  pre- 
cepts of  classic,  oriental,  and  modern  popular  dream-inter- 
pretation, to  detect  the  original  sense  of  all  their  readings. 
Many  must  turn  on  allusions  intelligible  at  the  time,  but  now 
obscure.  The  Moslem  dream-interpretation  of  eggs  as  con- 
cerning women,  because  of  a  saying  of  Mohammed  about 
women  being  like  an  egg  hidden  in  a  nest,  is.  an  example 
which  will  serve  as  well  as  a  score  to  show  how  dream-rules 
may  turn  on  f^ir-fetched  ideas,  not  to  be  recognized  unless 
the  kej'^  happens  to  have  been  preserved.  Many  rules  nuist 
have  been  taken  at  random  to  fill  up  lists  of  omens,  and  of 
contingencies  to  match  them.  Why  should  a  dream  of 
roasting  meat  show  the  dreamer  to  be  a  backbiter,  or 
laughter  in  sleep  presage  diflirult  circumstances,  or  a  dream 
of  playing  on  the  clavicord  the  death  of  relatives  ?  But  the 
other  side  of  the  matter,  the  still  apparent  nonsensical 
rationality  of  so  many  dream-omens,  is  much  more  remark- 
able. It  can  only  be  considered  that  the  same  symbolism 
that  la}"^  at  the  root  of  the  whole  delusion,  favoured  the  keep- 
ing up  and  new  making  of  such  rules  as  carried  obvious 


meanmg. 


Take  the  Moslem  ideas  that  it  is  a  good  omen  to 


dream  of  something  white  or  green,  or  of  water,  but  bad  to 
dream  of  black  or  red,  or  of  fire  ;  that  a  palm-tree  indicates  an 
Arab,  and  a  peacock  a  king  ;  that  he  who  dreams  of  devour- 
ing the  stars  will  live  free  at  some  great  man's  table.  Take 
the  classic  rules  as  in  the  *  Oneirocritica '  of  Artemidorus, 

'  Callaway,  '  Kel.  of  Amazulu,'  pp.  2r.(i,  211  ;  R.  Taylor,  '  N.  Z.'  p.  334. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


123 


and  pass  on  through  the  mediaeval  treatises  down  to  such  a 
di'eam-dictionary  as  servant-maids   still  buy  in   penny  chap- 
books  at  the  fair,  and  it  will  be  seen  that  tlie  ancient  rules 
still  hold  their  places  to  a  remarkable  extent,  while  half  the 
mass  of  precepts  still  shosv  their  original  mystic  significance, 
mostly  direct,  but  occasionally  according  to  the  rule  of  con- 
traries.    An  oft'ensive  odour  signifies   annoyance  ;  to  wash 
the  hands  denotes  release  from  anxieties  ;  to  embrace  one's 
best  beloved  is  very  fortunate  ;  to  have  one's  feet  cut  off 
prevents  a  journey  ;  to  weep  in  sleep  is  a  sign  of  joy  ;  he 
who  dreams  he  hath  lost  a  tooth  shall  lose  a  friend  ;  and  he 
that  dreams  that  a  rib  is  taken  out  of  his  side  shall  ere  long 
see  the  death  of  his  wife  ;  to  follow  bees,  betokens  gain  ;  to 
be  married  signifies  that  some  of  your  kinsfolk  are  dead ;  if 
one  sees  many  fowls  together,  that  shall  be  jealousy  and 
chiding;  if  a  snake  pursue  him,  let  him  be  on  his  guard 
against  evil  women  ;  to  dream  of  death,  denotes  happiness 
and  long  life ;  to  dreim  of  swimming  and  wading  in  the 
water  is  good,  so  that  the  head  be  kept  above  water ;  to 
dream  of  crossing  a  bridge,  denotes  you  will  leave  a  good 
situation  to  seek  a  better ;  to  dream  you  see  a  dragon  is  a 
sign  that  you  shall  see  some  great  lord  your  master,  or  a 
magistrate.^ 

Haruspication  belongs,  among  the  lower  races,  especially 
to  the  Malays  and  Polynesians,^  and  to  various  Asiatic 
tribes.^  It  is  mentioned  as  practised  in  Peru  under  the 
Incas.*  Captain  Burton's  account  from  Central  Africa 
perhaps  fairly  displays  its  symbolic  principle.  He 
describes  the  mganga  or  sorcerer  taking  an  ordeal  by  kill- 


Take 
lorus, 


334. 


•  Artemulorus,  '  Oneirocritica  ;'  Cockayne,  '  Leechcloms,'etc,,  of  Early  Eng- 
land,' vol.  iii  ;  SeafielJ,  'Literature,  etc.,  of  Dreams;'  Brand,  voL  iii.  ; 
Halliwell,  'Pop.  Rhymes,'  etc.,  p.  217,  etc.,  etc. 

2  St.  John,  'Far  East,'  vol.  i.  pp.  74,  115;  Ellis,  •  Polyn.  Res.' vol.  iv. 
p.  150  ;  Polack,  'New  Zealandcrs,'  vol.  i.  p.  255. 

'  Geor{,'i,  '  Reise  im  Russ.  Reicli,'  vol.  i.  p.  281 ;  Hooker,  '  Himalayan 
Journals,'  voL  i.  p.  135  ;  '  As.  Res.'  vol.  iii.  p.  27  ;  Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth. 
vol.  i.  p.  61. 

*  Cieza  de  Leon,  p.  289  ;  Kivero  and  Tschudi,  '  Peru,'  p.  183. 


M 


Tx: 


124 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


I'  I 


?!  f\ 


ing  and  splitting  a  fowl  and  inspecting  its  inside  :  if  black« 
ness  or  blemish  appears  about  the  wings,  it  denotes  the 
treachery  of  children  and  kinsmen ;  the  backbone  convicts  the 
mother  and  grandmother ;  the  tail  shows  that  the  criminal 
is  the  wife,  &c.^  In  ancient  Rome,  where  the  art  held  so 
great  a  place  in  public  affairs,  the  same  sort  of  interpretation 
was  usual,  as  witness  the  omen  of  Augustus,  where  the  livers 
of  the  victims  were  found  folded,  and  the  diviners  prophesied 
him  accordingly  a  doubled  empire.^  Since  then,  haruspica- 
tion  has  died  out  more  completely  than  almost  any  magical 
rite,  3'et  even  now  a  characteristic  relic  of  it  may  be  noticed 
in  Brandenburg ;  when  a  pig  is  killed  and  the  spleen  is 
found  turned  over,  there  will  be  another  overthrow,  namely 
a  death  in  the  family  that  year.^  With  haruspication  may 
be  classed  the  art  of  divining  b}'  bones,  as  where  North 
American  Indians  would  put  in  the  fire  a  certain  flat  bone 
of  a  porcupine,  and  judge  from  its  colour  if  the  porcupine 
hunt  would  be  successful.*  The  principal  art  of  this  kind  is 
divination  by  a  shoulder-blade,  technically  called  scapuli- 
mancy  or  omoplatoscopy.  This  is  especially  found  in  vogue 
in  Tartary,  where  it  is  ancient,  and  whence  it  may  have 
spread  into  all  other  countries  where  we  hear  of  it.  Its 
simple  symbolism  is  well  shown  in  the  elaborate  account 
with  diagrams  given  by  Pallas.  The  shoulder-blade  is  put 
on  the  fire  till  it  cracks  in  various  directions,  and  then  a 
long  split  lengthwise  is  reckoned  as  the  "  waj'  of  life," 
while  cross-cracks  on  the  right  and  left  stand  for  different 
kinds  and  degrees  of  good  and  evil  fortune  ;  or  if  the  omen 
is  only  taken  as  to  some  special  event,  then  lengthwise  splits 
mean  going  on  well,  but  crosswise  ones  stand  for  hindrance, 
white  marks  portend  much  snow,  black  ones  a  mild  winter, 
&c.*     To  find  this  quaint  art  lasting  on  into  modern  times 


t 


»  Burton,  '  Central  Afr.'  vol.  ii.  p.  32  ;  Waitz,  vol.  u.  pp.  417,  518. 
'  Plin.  xi.  73.     See  Cic.  de  Diviiiationo,  ii.  12. 

*  Wuttke,  •  Volksaberglaube,' p.  32. 

*  Lo  •loune,  'Nouvelltj  France,'  vol.  i.  p.  90. 

*  Kleinni,  '  Cultur-Gesch.'  vol.  iii.  pp.  109,  199  ;  vol.  iv.  p.  221 ;  Rnbru 


!;tf. 


SUKVIVAL    IN     CULTURE. 


125 


lubru 


in  Europe,  we  can  hardly  go  to  a  better  place  than  our  own 
country  ;  a  proper  English  term  for  it  is  "  reading  the  spcal- 
bone"  (speal  =  cspatilc).  In  Ireland,  Camden  describes  the 
looking  through  the  blade-bone  of  a  sheep,  to  find  a  dark 
spot  which  foretells  a  death,  and  Drayton  thus  commemo- 
rates the  art  in  his  Polyolbion  : — 

"  By  th'  shoulder  of  a  ram  from  off  the  right  side  par'd, 
Which  usually  they  boile,  the  spade-bone  being  bar'd, 
"Which  when  the  wizard  takes,  and  gazing  therupon 
Things  long  to  come  foreshowes,  as  things  done  long  agone." ' 

Chiromancy,  or  palmistry,  seems  much  like  this,  though  it  is 
also  mixed  up  with  astrology.  It  flourished  in  ancient 
Greece  and  Italy  as  it  still  does  in  India,  where  to  say,  "  It 
is  written  on  the  palms  of  my  hands,"  is  a  usual  way  of  ex- 
pressing a  sense  of  inevitable  fate.  Chiromancy  traces  in 
the  markings  of  the  palm  a  line  of  fortune  and  a  line  of  life, 
finds  proof  of  melancholy  in  the  intersections  on  the  satur- 
nine mount,  presages  sorrow  and  death  from  black  spots  in 
the  finger-nails,  and  at  last,  having  exhausted  the  powers  of 
this  childish  symbolism,  it  completes  its  system  by  details  of 
which  the  absurdity  is  no  longer  relieved  by  even  an  ideal 
sense.  The  art  has  its  modern  votaries  not  merely  among 
G,ypsy  fortune  -  tellers,  but  in  what  is  called  "  good 
society."  ' 

It  may  again  and  again  thus  be  noticed  in  magic  arts, 
that  the  association  of  ideas  is  obvious  up  to  a  certain  point. 
Thus  when  the  New  Zealand  sorcerer  took  omens  by  the 
way  his  divining  sticks  (guided  by  spirits)  fell,  he  quite 
naturally  said  it  was  a  good  omen  if  the  stick  representing 
his  own  tribe  fell  on  top  of  that  representing  the  enemy, 
and  vice  versa.  Zulu  diviners  still  work  a  similar  process 
with  their  magical  pieces  of  stick,  which  rise  to  say  yes  and 

qnis,  in  Pinkcrton,  vol.  vii.  p.  66  ;  Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  p.  1067  ;  R.  F.  Burton, 
•Sindh,'  p.  189  ;  M.  A.  Wulker,  '  MiicedoniM,'  p.  109. 

*  Urand,  vol.  ill.  p.  330  ;  Forbes  Loslie,  vol.  ii.  p.  41)1. 

"  Maury,  '  Miigio,  etc.,'  p.  74  ;  Uraiul,  vol.  iiL.  p.  348,  etc.  See  figure  ia 
Cornelius  Agrippa,  '  De  Occult.  Philosoph. '  ii.  27. 


J  I 


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126 


SURVIVAL    IX    CULTURE. 


full  to  say  no,  jump  upon  the  head  or  stomach  or  other 
affected  part  of  the  patient's  bodj'  to  show  where  his  com- 
plaint is,  and  lie  pointing  towards  the  house  of  the  doctor 
who  can  cure  him.  So  likewise,  where  a  similar  device  was 
practised  ages  ago  in  the  Old  World,  the  responses  were 
taken  from  staves  which  (by  the  operation  of  daemons)  fell 
backward  or  forward,  to  the  right  or  left.^  But  when 
processes  of  this  kind  are  developed  to  complexity,  the 
S3'stem  has,  of  course,  to  be  completed  by  more  arbitrary 
arrangements.  This  is  well  shown  in  one  of  the  divinatory 
arts  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter  for  their  connexion  with 
games  of  chance.  In  cartomancy,  the  art  of  fortune-telling 
with  packs  of  cards,  there  is  a  sort  of  nonsensical  sense  in 
such  rules  as  that  two  queens  mean  friendship  and  four 
mean  chattering,  or  that  the  knave  of  hearts  prophesies  a 
brave  young  man  who  will  come  into  the  family  to  be  use- 
ful, unless  his  purpose  be  reversed  by  his  card  being  upside 
down.  But  of  course  the  pack  can  only  furnish  a  limited 
number  of  such  comparatively  rational  interpretations,  and 
the  rest  must  be  left  to  such  arbitrary  fancy  as  that  the 
seven  of  diamonds  means  a  prize  in  the  lottery,  and  the 
ten  of  the  same  suit  an  unexpected  journey.^ 

A  remarkable  group  of  divining  instruments  illustrates 
another  principle.  In  South-east  Asia,  the  Sgau  Karens, 
at  funeral  feasts,  hang  a  bangle  or  metal  ring  by  a  thread 
over  a  brass  basin,  which  the  relatives  of  the  dead  approach 
in  succession  and  strike  on  the  edge  with  a  bit  of  bamboo ; 
when  the  one  who  was  most  beloved  touches  the  basin,  the 
dead  man's  spirit  responds  by  twisting  and  stretching  the 
string  till  it  breaks  and  the  ring  falls  into  the  cup,  or  at 
least  till  it  rings  against  it.^     Nearer  Central  Asia,  in  the 

>  R.  Taylor,  '  New  Zealand,'  p.  205  ;  Shortland,  p.  139  ;  Callaway,  '  Re- 
ligion of  Ainazulu,'  p.  330,  etc.  ;  Theophylact.  in  Brand,  vol.  iii.  p.  332. 
Compare  mentions  of  similar  devices  ;  Herodot.  iv.  67  (Scythia)  ;  Burton, 
'Central  Africa,'  vol.  ii.  p.  350. 

2  Migne's  'Die  des  Sciences  Occultes.' 

8  Mason,  '  Karens. '  in  '  Journ.  As.  See.  Bengal,'  1866,  port  ii.  p.  200  ;  Ba» 
tian,  'Oostl.  Asieu,'  voL  i.  p.  146. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


u\ 


north-east  corner  of  India,  among  the  Bodo  and  Dhimal,  the 
professional  exorcist  has  to  find  out  what  deity  has  entered 
into  a  patient's  body  to  punish  him  for  some  impiety  by  an 
attack  of  illness  ;  this  he  discovers  by  setting  thirteen  leaves 
round  him  on  the  ground  to  represent  the  gods,  and  then 
holding  a  pendulum  attached  to  his  thumb  by  a  string,  till 
the  god  in  question  is  persuaded  by  invocation  to  declare 
himself,  making  the  pendulum  swing  towards  his  representa- 
tive leaf.^  These  mystic  arts  (not  to  go  into  the  question 
how  these  tribes  came  to  use  tliem)  are  rude  forms  of  the 
classical  dactyliomancy,  of  which  so  curious  an  account  is 
given  in  the  trial  of  the  conspirators  Patricius  and  Hilarius, 
who  worked  it  to  find  out  who  was  to  supplant  the  emperor 
Valens.  A  round  table  was  marked  at  the  edge  with  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet,  and  with  prayers  and  mystic  cere- 
monies a  ring  was  held  suspended  over  it  by  a  thread,  and 
by  swinging  or  stopping  towards  certain  letters  gave  the  re- 
sponsive words  of  the  oracle.^  Dactyliomancy  has  dwindled 
in  Europe  to  the  art  of  finding  out  what  o'clock  it  is  by 
holding  a  ring  hanging  inside  a  tumbler  by  a  thread,  till, 
without  conscious  aid  by  the  operator,  it  begins  to  swing 
and  strikes  the  hour.  Father  Schott,  in  his  *  Physica 
Curiosa '  (1662),  refrains  with  commendable  caution  from 
ascribing  this  phenomenon  universally  to  demoniac  influence. 
It  survives  among  ourselves  in  child's  play,  and  though  we 
are  "  no  conjurors,"  we  may  learn  something  from  the  little 
instrument,  which  remarkably  displays  the  effects  of  in- 
sensible movement.  The  operator  really  gives  slight 
impulses  till  they  accumulate  to  a  considerable  vibration,  as 
in  ringing  a  church-bell  by  very  gentle  pulls  exactly  timed. 
That  he  does,  though  unconsciously,  cause  and  direct  the 
swings,  may  be  shown  by  an  attempt  to  work  the  instrument 
with  the  operator's  eyes  shut,  which  will  be  found  to  fail,  the 
directing  power  being  lost.  The  action  of  the  famous  divin- 
ing-rod with  its  curiously  versatile  sensibility  to  water,  ore, 

'  Hodgson,  'Abor.  of  India,'  p.  170.     See  MacpliersoD,  p.  106  (Khonda). 
^  Aniniian.  Marcellin.  xxix.  1. 


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128 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


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treasure,  and  thieves,  seems  to  belong  partly  to  trickery  by 
professional  Dousterswivels,  and  partly  to  more  or  less  con- 
scious direction  by  honester  oi)erators.  It  is  still  known 
in  England,  and  in  Germany  they  are  apt  to  hide  it  in 
a  baby's  clothes,  and  so  get  it  baptized  for  greater  effi- 
ciency.^ To  conclude  this  group  of  divinatory  instruments, 
chance  or  the  operator's  direction  may  determine  the  action 
of  one  of  the  most  familiar  of  classic  and  mediaeval  ordeals, 
the  so-called  coscinomancy,  or,  as  it  is  described  in 
Hudibras,  "  th'  oracle  of  sieve  and  shears,  that  turns  as 
certain  as  the  s])heres."  The  sieve  was  held  hanging 
by  a  thread,  or  by  the  points  of  a  pair  of  shears  stuck  into 
its  rim,  and  it  would  turn,  or  swing,  or  fall,  at  the  mention 
of  a  thief's  name,  and  give  similar  signs  for  other  purposes. 
Of  this  ancient  rite,  the  Christian  ordeal  of  the  Bible  and 
key,  still  in  frequent  use,  is  a  variation  :  the  proper  way 
to  detect  a  thief  by  this  is  to  read  the  50th  Psalm  to  the 
apparatus,  and  when  it  hears  the  verse,  "  When  thou  sawest 
a  thief,  then  thou  consentedst  with  him,"  it  will  turn  to  the 
culprit.^ 

Count  de  Maistre,  with  his  usual  fiiculty  of  taking  an 
argument  up  at  the  wrong  end,  tells  us  that  judicial 
astrology  no  doubt  hangs  to  truths  of  the  first  order,  which 
have  been  taken  from  us  as  useless  or  dangerous,  or  which 
we  cannot  recognize  under  their  new  forms. ^  A  sober 
examination  of  the  subject  may  rather  justify  the  contrary 
opinion,  that  it  is  on  an  error  of  the  first  order  that  astro- 
logy depends,  the  error  of  mistaking  ideal  analogy  for  real 
connexion.  Astrology,  in  the  immensity  of  its  delusive 
influence  on  mankind,  and  by  the  comparatively  modern 
period  to  whicli  it  remained  an  honoured  branch  of  philo- 
sophy,  may    claim    the    highest    rank   among  the   occult 

'  Chevreul,  '  De  la  Baguette  Divinatoire,  du  Pendule  dit  Exploiateur,  et 
des  Tables  TournaiitcH,*  Paris,  1854  ;  Brand,  vol.  iii.  p.  332  ;  Griiniii,  '  D.  M.' 
p.  9-26;  H.  B.  Woodward,  in  'Geological  Alag.,'  Nov.  1872  ;  Wuttke,  p.  04. 

^  Cornelius  Agrippa,  'De  Speciebus  MagiaR,'  xxi.  ;  Brand,  vol.  iii.  p.  361 ; 
Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  p.  1062. 

*  De  Maistre,  'Soirees  de  St  Tetersbourg,'  vol.  iL  p.  212. 


mi:. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


2.9 


CO- 

live 

hvn. 
jlo- 
lult 

et 
IM.' 
104. 


sciences.  It  scarcely  belongs  to  very  low  levels  of  civiliza- 
tion, although  one  of  its  fundamental  conceptions,  namely, 
that  of  the  souls  or  animating  intelligences  of  the  celestial 
bodies,  is  rooted  in  the  depths  of  savage  life.  Yet  the  fol- 
lowing Maori  specimen  of  astrological  reasoning  is  as  real 
an  argument  as  could  be  found  in  Paracelsus  or  Agrippa,  nor 
is  there  reason  to  doubt  its  being  home-made.  When  the 
siege  of  a  New  Zealand  "jja"  is  going  on,  if  Venus  is  near  the 
moon,  the  natives  naturally  imagine  the  two  as  enemy  and 
fortress;  if  the  planet  is  above,  the  foe  will  have  the  upper 
hand  ;  but  if  below,  then  the  men  of  the  soil  will  be  able  to 
defend  themselves.^  Though  the  early  history  of  astrology 
is  obscure,  its  great  development  and  elaborate  systema- 
tization  were  undoubtedly  the  work  of  civilized  nations  of 
the  ancient  and  mediieval  world.  As  might  be  well  supposed, 
a  great  joart  of  its  j)recepts  have  lost  their  intelligible  sense, 
or  never  had  any,  but  the  origin  of  many  others  is  still 
evident.  To  a  considerable  extent  they  rest  on  direct 
symbolism.  Such  are  the  rules  which  connect  the  sun 
with  gold,  with  the  heliotrope  and  p^eony,  with  the  cock 
■which  heralds  day,  with  magnanimous  animals,  such  as  the 
lion  and  bull ;  and  the  moon  with  silver,  and  the  changing 
chama3leon,  and  the  palm-tree,  which  was  considered  to 
send  out  a  monthly  shoot.  Direct  symbolism  is  plain  in 
that  main  principle  of  the  calculation  of  nativities,  the 
notion  of  the  "  ascendant  "  in  the  horoscope,  which  reckons 
the  part  of  the  heavens  rising  in  the  east  at  the  moment  of 
a  child's  birth  as  being  connected  with  the  child  itself,  and 
prophetic  of  its  future  life.^  It  is  an  old  story,  that  when 
two  brothers  were  once  taken  ill  together,  Hippokrates  the 
phj'sician  concluded  from  the  coincidence  that  they  were 
twins,  but  Poseidonios  the  astrologer  considered  rather  that 
they  were  born  under  the  same  constellation  :  we  may  add, 
that  either  argument  would  be   thought  reasonable  by  a 


*  Shortland,  'Trads.,  etc.  of  New  Zealand,'  p.  138. 

•  See  Cicero,  'Do  Div.'i.  ;  Lucian.     *  De  Astrclog.' ;  Cornelius  Agrippa, 
'  De  Occulta  Philosophia ; '  Sibly,  '  Occult  Sciences  ; '  Brand,  vol.  iii. 

VOL.    I.  K 


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SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


Bavage.  One  of  the  most  instructive  astrological  doctrines 
which  has  kept  its  place  in  modern  popular  philosophy,  is 
that  of  the  sympathy  of  growing  and  declining  nature  with 
the  waxing  and  waning  moon.  Among  classical  precepts 
are  these :  to  set  eggs  under  the  hen  at  new  moon,  but  to 
root  up  trees  when  the  moon  is  on  the  wane,  and  after 
midday.  The  Lithuanian  precept  to  wean  boys  on  a  wax- 
ing, but  girls  on  a  waning  moon,  no  doubt  to  make  the 
boys  sturdy  and  the  girls  slim  and  delicate,  is  a  fair  match 
for  the  Orkney  islanders'  objection  to  marrying  except  with 
a  growing  moon,  while  some  even  wish  for  a  flowing  tide. 
The  following  lines,  from  Tusser's  *  Five  Hundred  Points 
of  Husbandry,'  show  neatly  in  a  single  case  the  two  con- 
trary lunar  influences : — 

•'  Sowe  peason  and  beans  in  the  wane  of  the  moone 
Who  soweth  them  sooner,  he  soweth  too  soone: 
That  they,  with  the  planet,  may  rest  and  rise, 
And  flourish  with  bearing,  most  plentilul  wise."  * 

The  notion  that  the  weather  changes  with  the  moon's 
quarterings  is  still  held  with  great  vigour  in  England. 
Yet  the  meteorologists,  with  all  their  eagerness  to  catch  at 
any  rule  which  at  all  answers  to  facts,  quite  repudiate  this 
one,  which  indeed  appears  to  be  simply  a  maxim  belonging 
to  popular  astrology.  Just  as  the  growth  and  dwindling  of 
plants  became  associated  with  the  moon's  wax  and  wane,  so 
changes  of  weather  became  associated  with  changes  of  the 
moon,  while,  by  astrologers'  logic,  it  did  not  matter 
whether  the  moon's  change  were  real,  at  new  and  full,  or 
imaginary,  at  the  intermediate  quarters.  That  educated 
people  to  whom  exact  weather  records  are  accessible  should 
still  find  satisfaction  in  the  fanciful  lunar  rule,  is  an  in- 
teresting case  of  intellectual  survival. 

In  such  cases  as  these,  the  astrologer  has  at  any  rate  a 
real  analogy,  deceptive  though  it  be,  to  base  his  rule  upon. 

*  Plin.  Tvi.  75 ;  xviii  76  ;  Grimm,  'D.  M.'  p.  676  ;  Brand,  voL  ii.  p.  169; 
▼ol.  iiL  p.  144. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


131 


a 


But  most   of  his   pseudo-science   seems   to  rest  on  even 
weaker  and  more  arbitrary  analogies,  not  of  things,  hut  of 
names.     Names  of  stars  and  constellations,  of  signs  denot- 
ing regions  of  the  sky  and  periods  of  days  and  years,  no 
matter    how    arbitraril}'    given,    are    materials    \\hich    the 
astrologer  can  work  upon,  and  bring  into  ideal  connexion 
with  mundane   events.      That    astronomers    should   have 
divided  the  sun's  course  into  imaginar}-  signs  of  the  zodiac, 
was    enough    to    originate    astrological    rules   that    these 
celestial  signs  have  an  actual  effect  on  real  earthly  rams, 
bulls,  crabs,  lions,  virgins.      A  child  born  under  the  sign 
of  the  Lion  will  be  courageous ;  but  one  born  under  the 
Crab  will  not  go  forward  well  in  life  ;  one  born  under  the 
Wiiterman  is  likely  to  be  drowned,  and  so  forth.     Towards 
1524,  Europe  was  awaiting  in  an  agony  of  prayerful  terror 
a    second    deluge,   prophesied  for  February  in   that   year. 
As  the  fatal  month   drew  nigh,  dwellers  b}^  the  waterside 
moved  in  crowds  to  the  hills,  some  provided  boats  to  save 
them,  and  the  President  Aurial,  at  Toulouse,  built  himself 
a  Noah's  Ark.     It  was  the  great  astrologer  Stoefler  (the 
originator,  it  is   said,  of    the   weather-prophecies   in   our 
almanacks)  who  foretold  this  cataclysm,  and  his  argument 
has  the  advantage  of  being  still  perfectly  intelligible — at 
the  date  in  question,  three  planets  would  be  together  in  the 
aqueous    sign    of    Pisces.     Again,   simply  because   astro- 
nomers chose  to  distribute  among  the  planets  the  names  of 
certain  deities,  the  planets  thereby  acquired  the  characters 
of  their  divine  namesakes.     Thus  it  was  that  the  planet 
Venus  became  connected  with  love,  Mars  with  war,  Jupiter 
(whose    %    in    altered    shape    still   heads    our   physicians' 
prescriptions)     with   power   and   'joviality.'      Throughout 
the  East,  astrology  even  now  remains  a  science  in  full  esteem. 
The  condition  of  medireval  Europe  may  still  be  perfectly 
realized  by  the  traveller  in  Persia,  where  the  Shah  waits  for 
days  outside  the  walls  of  his  capital  till  the  constellations 
allow  him  to  enter,  and  where  on  the  days  appointed  by  the 
stars  for  letting  blood,  it  literally  flows  in  streams  from  the 

K  2 


11 


*t,  r 


( I 


J,  ' 


■  (I    i>  ' 

r  I  "I 


11! 


\i' 


-i  i 


(-4: 


132 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


barbers'  shops  into  the  street.  Professor  Wuttke  declares, 
that  there  are  many  districts  in  Germany  where  the  chihVs 
horoscope  is  still  regularly  kept  wit!.,  the  baptismal  certifi- 
cate in  the  family  chest.  We  scarcely  reach  this  pitch  of 
conseiTatism  in  England,  but  I  happen  myself  to  live  within 
a  mile  of  an  astrologer,  and  I  lately  saw  a  grave  paper  on 
nativities,  offered  in  all  good  faith  to  the  Britisli 
Association.  The  piles  of  *  Zadkiel's  Almanack  *  in  the 
booksellers'  windows  in  country  towns  about  Christmas 
are  a  s3'mptom  how  much  yet  remains  to  be  done  in  popular 
education.  As  a  specimen  at  once  of  the  survival  and  of 
the  meaning  of  astrologic  reasoning,  I  cannot  do  better 
than  quote  a  passage  from  a  book  published  in  London  in 
18G1,  and  entitled,  '  The  Hand-Book  of  Astrology,  by 
Zadkiel  Tao-Sze.'  At  page  72  of  his  first  volume,  the 
astrologer  relates  as  follows :  "  The  Map  of  the  heavens 
given  at  page  45  was  drawn  on  the  occasion  of  a  young 
lady  having  been  arrested  on  a  charge  of  the  murder  of  h  ^r 
infant  brother.  Having  read  in  a  newsj^apcr,  at  twenty 
four  minutes  past  noon  on  the  23rd  July,  1860,  that  ^liss 
C.  K.  had  been  arrested  on  a  charge  of  the  murder  of  her 
young  brother,  the  author  felt  desirous  to  ascertain  whether 
she  were  guilty  or  not,  and  drew  the  map  accordingly. 
Finding  the  moon  in  the  twelfth  house,  she  clearly  signifies 
the  prisoner.  The  moon  is  in  a  moveable  sign,  and  moves 
in  the  twenty-four  hours,  14°  17'.  She  is,  therefore,  swift 
in  motion.  These  things  indicated  that  the  prisoner  would 
be  very  speedily  released.  Then  we  find  a  moveable  sign 
in  the  cusp  of  the  twelfth,  and  its  ruler,  ? ,  in  a  moveable 
sign,  a  further  indication  of  speedy  release.  Hei-.t  "t  was 
judged  and  declared  to  many  friends  that*  the  prisoner 
would  be  immediately  released,  which  was  the  fact.  We 
looked  to  see  whether  tlie  prisoner  were  guilty  of  the  deed 
or  not,  and  finding  the  Moon  in  Libra,  a  humane  sign,  and 
having  just  past  the  *  aspect  of  the  Sun  and  7;,  both 
being  on  the  M.  C.  we  felt  assured  that  she  was  a  humane, 
feeling,  and  honourable  girl,  and  that  it  was   quite   im« 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


133 


in 
le 

IS 


possible  she  corJcl  be  guilty  of  any  such  atrocity.  AVe 
deehired  her  to  be  perfectly  innocent,  and  as  the  Moon  was 
so  well  aspected  from  the  tenth  house,  we  declared  that  her 
honour  would  be  very  soon  perfectly  established."  Had 
the  astrologer  waited  a  few  months  longer,  to  have  read  the 
confession  of  the  miserable  Constance  Kent,  he  would 
perhaps  have  put  a  different  sense  on  his  moveable  signs, 
just  balances,  and  sunny  and  jovial  aspects.  Nor  would 
this  be  a  difficult  task,  for  these  fancies  lend  themselves  to 
endless  variety  of  new  interpretation.  And  on  such  fancies 
and  such  interpretations,  the  great  science  of  the  stars  has 
from  first  to  last  been  based. 

Looking  at  the  details  here  selected  as  fair  samples  of 
symbolic  magic,  we  may  well  ask  the  question,  is  there  in 
the  whole  monstrou';^  farrago  no  truth  or  value  whatever  ? 
It  appears  that  there  is  practically  none,  and  that  the  world 
has  been  enthralled  for  ages  by  a  blind  belief  in  processes 
wholly  irrelevant  to  their  supposed  results,  and  which 
might  as  well  have  been  taken  just  the  opposite  way. 
Pliny  justly  saw  in  magic  a  study  worthy  of  his  especial 
attention,  "  for  the  very  reason  that,  being  the  most  fraudu- 
lent of  arts,  it  had  prevailed  throughout  the  world  and 
through  so  many  ages "  (eo  ipso  quod  fraudulentissima 
artium  plurimum  in  toto  terrarum  orbe  plurimisque  seculis 
•  jluit).  If  it  be  asked  how  such  a  system  could  have  held 
its  ground,  not  merely  in  independence  but  in  defiance  of 
its  own  facts,  a  fair  answer  does  not  seem  hard  to  give.  In 
the  first  place,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  occult  science 
has  not  existed  entirely  in  its  own  strength.  Futile  as  its 
arts  may  be,  they  are  associated  in  practice  with  other 
proceedings  by  no  means  futile.  What  are  passed  off  as 
sacred  omens,  are  often  really  the  cunning  man's  shrewd 
guesses  at  the  past  and  future.  Divination  serves  to  the 
sorcerer  as  a  mask  for  real  inquest,  as  when  the  ordeal 
gives  him  invaluable  opportunity  of  examining  the  guilty, 
whose  trembling  hands  and  equivocating  speech  betray  at 
^nce  their  secret  and  their  utter  belief  in  his  power  of 


134. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


l-l\ 


m-i 


:  1 

-  1 

-  'i 


1  j  i 


i 

1  < 


dis(.'crning  it.  Prophecy  tends  to  fulfil  itself,  as  wlurc  the 
mngiciun,  by  putting  into  a  victim's  mind  the  belief  that 
fatal  arts  have  been  practised  against  him,  can  slay  him 
with  this  idea  as  with  a  material  weapon.  Often  priest  as 
well  as  magician,  he  has  the  whole  power  of  religion  at  his 
back ;  often  a  man  in  power,  always  an  unscrupulous 
intriguer,  he  can  work  witchcraft  and  statecraft  together, 
and  make  his  left  hand  help  his  right.  Often  a  doctor,  he 
can  aid  his  omens  of  life  or  death  with  remedy  or  poison, 
while  what  we  still  call  "conjurors'  tricks"  of  sleight  of 
hand,  have  done  much  to  keep  up  his  supernatural  prestige. 
From  the  earliest  known  stages  of  civilization,  professional 
magicians  have  existed,  who  live  by  their  craft,  and  keep  it 
alive.  It  has  been  said,  that  if  somebody  had  endowed 
lecturers  to  teach  that  two  sides  of  a  triangle  are  together 
equal  to  the  third,  the  doctrine  would  have  a  respectable 
following  among  ourselves.  At  any  rate,  magic,  with  an 
influential  jirofossion  interested  in  keeping  it  in  credit  and 
power,  did  not  depend  for  its  existence  on  mere  evidence. 

And  in  the  second  place,  as  to  this  evidence.  Magic  has 
not  its  origin  in  fraud,  and  seems  seldom  practised  as  an 
utter  imposture.  The  sorcerer  generally  learns  his  time- 
honoured  profession  in  good  faith,  and  retains  his  belief  in 
it  more  or  less  from  first  to  last ;  at  once  dupe  and  cheat, 
he  combines  the  energy  of  a  believer  with  the  cunning  of  a 
hypocrite.  Had  occult  science  been  simply  framed  for 
purposes  of  deception,  mere  nonsense  would  have  answered 
the  purpose,  whereas,  what  we  find  is  an  elaborate  and 
systematic  pseudo-science.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  sincere  but 
fallacious  system  of  philosophy,  evolved  by  the  human 
intellect  by  processes  still  in  great  measure  intelligible  to 
our  own  minds,  and  it  had  thus  an  original  standing-ground 
in  the  world.  And  though  the  evidence  of  fact  was  dead 
against  it,  it  was  but  lately  and  gradually  that  this  evidence 
was  brought  fatally  to  bear.  A  general  survey  of  the 
practical  working  of  the  system  may  be  made  somewhat 
thus.      A  large  proportion  of  successful  cases  belong  to 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


la- 


in 


a 

lor 


id 


m 

to 


le 


natural  means  disguised  as  magic.  Also,  a  certain  propor- 
tion of  cases  must  succeed  by  mere  chance.  By  far  the 
larger  proportion,  however,  are  what  we  should  call  failures; 
but  it  is  a  part  of  the  magician's  profession  to  keep  these 
from  counting,  and  this  he  does  with  extraordinary  resource 
of  rhetorical  shift  and  brazen  impudence.  He  deals  in 
ambiguous  phrases,  which  give  him  three  or  four  chiinces 
for  one.  He  knows  perfectly  how  to  impose  diihcult 
conditions,  and  to  lay  the  blame  of  failure  on  their  neglect. 
If  you  wish  to  make  gold,  the  alchemist  in  Central  Asia 
has  a  recipe  at  yonr  service,  only,  to  use  it,  you  must 
abstain  three  days  from  thinking  of  apes;  just  as  our 
English  folklore  says,  that  if  one  of  3'our  eyelashes  comes 
out,  and  you  put  it  on  your  thumb,  you  will  get  an3'thing 
you  wish  for,  if  you  can  only  avoid  thinking  of  foxes'  tails 
at  tlie  fatal  moment.  Again,  if  the  wrong  thing  happens, 
the  wizard  has  at  least  a  reason  why.  Has  a  daughter 
been  born  when  he  promised  a  son,  then  it  is  some  hostile 
practitioner  who  has  turned  tlie  boy  into  a  girl ;  does  a 
tempest  come  just  when  he  is  making  fine  weather,  then 
he  calmly  demands  a  larger  fee  for  stronger  ceremonies, 
assuring  his  clients  that  they  may  thank  him  as  it  is,  for 
how  much  worse  it  would  have  been  had  he  not  done  what 
he  did.  And  even  setting  aside  all  this  accessory  trickery, 
if  we  look  at  honest  but  unscientific  people  practising 
occult  science  in  good  faith,  and  face  to  face  with  facts, 
we  shall  see  that  the  failures  which  condemn  it  in  our 
eyes  carry  comparatively  little  weight  in  theirs.  Part 
escape  under  the  elastic  pretext  of  a  "  little  more  or  less," 
as  the  loser  in  the  lottery  consoles  himself  that  his  lucky 
number  came  within  two  of  a  prize,  or  the  moon-observer 
points  out  triumphantl}'  that  a  change  of  weather  has  come 
within  two  or  three  days  before  or  after  a  quarter,  so  that 
his  convenient  definition  of  near  a  moon's  quarter  appUes 
to  four  or  six  days  out  of  every  seven.  Part  escape  through 
incapacity  to  appreciate  negative  evidence,  which  allows 
one  success  to   outweicfh   half-a-dozen  failures.     How  few 


u  V 


! 


ii 


.';i: 


1 1 


if 


'ml 


II 


,ll 


136 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


there  are  even  amoniGf  the  educated  classes  now,  who 
have  taken  in  the  drift  of  that  memorable  passage  in  the 
beginning  of  the  'Novum  Organum:' — "  The  human  under- 
standing, when  any  proposition  has  been  once  laid  down 
(either  from  general  admission  and  belief,  or  from  the 
pleasure  it  affords),  forces  everything  else  to  add  fresh 
support  and  confirmation ;  and  although  most  cogent  and 
abundant  instances  may  e::ist  to  the  contrary,  yet  either 
does  not  observe  or  despises  them,  or  gets  rid  of  and 
rejects  them  by  some  distinction,  with  violent  and  injurious 
prejudi(!e,  rather  than  sacrifice  the  authority  of  its  first 
conclusions.  It  was  well  answered  by  him  who  was  shown 
in  a  temple  the  votive  tablets  suspended  by  such  as  had 
escaped  the  peril  of  shipwreck,  and  was  pressed  as  to 
whether  he  would  then  recognize  the  power  of  the  gods, 
by  an  inquiry,  *  But  where  are  the  portraits  of  those  who 
have  perished  in  spite  of  their  vows  ? '  "  ^ 

On  the  whole,  the  survival  of  symbolic  magic  through  the 
middle  nges  and  into  our  own  times  is  an  unsatisfactory,  but 
not  a  mysterious  fact.  A  once-established  opinion,  however 
delusive,  can  hold  its  own  from  age  to  age,  for  belief  can 
propagate  itself  without  reference  to  its  reasonable  origin, 
as  plants  are  propagated  from  slips  without  fresh  raising 
from  the  seed. 

The  history  of  survival  in  cases  like  those  of  the  folklore 
and  occult  arts  which  we  have  been  considering,  has  for  the 
most  part  been  a  history  of  dwindling  and  decay.  As  men's 
minds  change  in  progressing  culture,  old  customs  and 
opinions  fade  gradually  in  a  new  and  uncongenial  atmo- 
sphere, or  pass  into  states  moi'e  congruous  with  the  new  life 
around  them.  But  this  is  so  far  from  being  a  law  without 
exception,  that  a  narrow  view  of  history  may  often  make  it 
seem  to  be  no  law  at  all.  For  the  stream  of  civilization  winds 
and  turns  upon  itself,  and  what  seems  the  bright  onward 
current  of  one  age  may  in  the  next  spin  round  in  a  whirling 

'  Bacon,  '  Novum  Orgunum. '    The  original  story  is  that  of  Diagoias ;  see 
Cicero,  'De  Natura  Dcoruui,*  iii.  37  ;  Diog.  Laert.  lib.  vi.,  Diogonos,  6. 


■'?;■■  ,! 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


137 


ig 


lie 
I',- 


s 
id 


Is 
rd 


lee 


eddy,  or  spread  into  a  dull  and  pestilential  sn^amp.  Studj-- 
tng  with  a  wide  view  the  course  of  human  opinion,  we  may 
now  and  then  trace  on  from  the  very  turning-point  the 
change  from  passive  survival  into  active  revival.  Some 
well-known  belief  or  custom  has  for  centuries  shown 
symptoms  of  decay,  when  we  begin  to  see  that  the  state  of 
society,  instead  of  stunting  it,  is  favouring  its  new  growth, 
and  it  bursts  forth  again  with  a  vigour  often  as  marvellous 
as  it  is  unhealthy.  And  though  the  revival  be  not  destined 
to  hold  on  indefinitely,  and  though  when  opinion  turns 
again  its  ruin  may  be  more  merciless  than  before,  yet  it 
may  last  for  ages,  make  its  way  into  the  inmost  constitution 
of  society,  and  even  become  a  very  mark  and  characteristic 
of  its  time. 

Writers  who  desire  to  show  that,  with  all  our  faults,  we 
are  wiser  and  better  than  our  ancestors,  dwell  willingly  on 
the  history  of  witchcraft  between  the  middle  and  modern 
ages.  They  can  quote  Martin  Luther,  apropos  of  the 
witches  who  spoil  the  farmers'  butter  and  eggs,  **  I  would 
have  no  pity  on  these  witches ;  I  would  burn  them  all." 
They  can  show  the  good  Sir  Matthew  Hale  hanging  witches 
in  Suffolk,  on  the  authority  of  scripture  and  the  consenting 
wisdom  of  all  nations ;  and  King  James  presiding  at  the 
torture  of  Dr.  Fian  for  bringing  a  storm  against  the  king's 
ship  on  its  course  from  Denmark,  by  the  aid  of  a  fleet  of 
witches  in  sievos,  who  carried  out  a  christened  cat  to  sea.  In 
those  dreadlul  days,  to  be  a  blear-eyed  wizened  cripple  was 
to  be  worth  twenty  shillings  to  a  witch-finder  ;  for  a  woman 
to  have  what  this  witch-finder  was  pleased  to  call  the  devil's 
mark  on  her  body  was  presumption  for  judicial  sentence  of 
death  ;  and  not  to  bleed  or  shed  tears  or  sink  in  a  pond  was 
torture  first  and  then  the  stake.  Reform  of  religion  was  no 
cure  for  the  disease  of  men's  minds,  for  in  such  things  the 
Puritan  was  no  worse  than  the  Inquisitor,  and  no  better. 
Papist  and  Protestant  fought  with  one  another,  but  both 
turned  against  that  enemy  of  the  human  race,  the  hag  who 
had  sold  herself  to  Satan  to  ride  upon  a  broomstick,  and  to 


'^ 


138 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE, 


'y.'i>W: 


PI 


suck  children's  blood,  and  to  be  for  life  and  death  of  all 
creatures  the  most  wretched.  But  with  new  enlightenment 
there  came  in  the  very  teeth  of  law  and  authoritj'  a  cluinge 
in  European  opinion.  Toward  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century  the  hideous  superstition  was  breaking  down  among 
ourselves ;  Richard  Baxter,  of  the  *  Saint's  Rest,'  strove 
with  fanatic  zeal  to  light  again  at  home  the  witch-fires  of 
New  England,  but  he  strove  in  vain.  Year  by  year  tlie 
persecution  of  witches  became  more  hateful  to  the  educated 
classes,  and  though  it  died  hard,  it  died  at  last  down  to  a 
vestige.  In  our  days,  when  we  read  of  a  witch  being 
bin-nt  at  Camargo  in  1860,  we  point  to  Mexico  as  a 
country  miserably  in  the  rear  of  civilization.  And  if  in 
England  it  still  liappens  that  villnge  boors  have  to  be  tried 
at  quarter-sessions  for  ill-using  some  poor  old  woman,  who 
they  fancy  has  dried  a  cow  or  spoiled  a  tu?'nip  ^"on^  we 
comment  on  the  tenacitv  with  which  the  rustic  mi  '  ""gs 
to  exploded  follies,  and  cry  out  for  more  schoolmiist 

True  as  all  this  is,  the  ethnographer  must  go  wider  and 
deeper  in  his  inquiry,  to  do  his  subject  justice.  The  pre- 
vailing belief  in  witchcraft  that  sat  like  a  nightmare  on  public 
opinion  from  the  13th  to  the  17th  centuries,  far  from  being 
itself  a  product  of  mediaevalism,  was  a  revival  from  the 
remote  days  of  primaeval  liistory.  The  disease  that  broke  out 
afresh  in  Europe  had  been  chronic  among  the  lower  races 
for  hov/  many  nges  we  cannot  tell.  Witchcraft  is  part  and 
parcel  of  savage  life.  There  are  rude  races  of  Australia 
and  South  America  whose  intense  belief  in  it  has  led  them 
to  declare  that  if  men  were  never  bewitched,  and  never 
killed  by  violence,  they  would  not  die  at  all.  Like  the 
Australians,  the  Africans  will  inquire  of  their  dead  what 
sorcerer  slew  them  by  his  wicked  arts,  and  when  they  have 
satisfied  themselves  of  this,  blood  must  atone  for  blood. 
In  West  Africa,  it  has  been  boldly  asserted  that  the  belief 
in  witchcraft  costs  more  lives  than  the  slave  trade  ever  did. 
In  East  Africa,  Captain  Burton,  a  traveller  apt  to  draw  his 
social  sketches  in  a  few  sharp  lines,  remarks  tliat  what  with 


SUKVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


139 


slavery  and  what  with  black-magic,  life  is  precarious  amoug 
the  Wakhutu,  and  "no  one,  especially  in  old  age,  is  safe  from 
being  burnt  at  a  day's  notice  ;  "  and,  travelling  in  the  country 
of  the  Wazaramo,  he  tells  us  of  meeting  every  few  miles  with 
heaps  of  ashes  and  charcoal,  now  and  then  such  as  seemed 
to  have  been  a  father  and  mother,  with  a  little  heap  hard  by 
that  was  a  child. ^  Even  in  districts  of  British  India  a 
state  of  mind  ready  to  produce  horrors  like  these  is  well 
known  to  exist,  and  to  be  kept  down  less  by  persuasion 
than  by  main  force.  From  the  level  of  savage  life,  we  trace 
witchcraft  surviving  throughout  the  barbarian  and  early 
civilized  world.  It  was  existing  in  Europe  in  the  centuries 
preceding  the  10th,  but  with  no  especial  prominence,  while 
laws  of  Rothar  and  Charlemagne  are  actually  directed 
against  such  as  should  put  men  or  women  to  death  on  the 
charge  of  witchcraft.  In  the  11th  century,  ecclesiastical 
influence  was  discouraging  the  superstitious  belief  in  sorcery. 
But  now  a  period  of  reaction  set  in.  The  works  of  the 
monastic  legend  and  miracle-mongers  more  and  more  en- 
couraged a  baneful  credulity  as  to  the  supernatural.  In  the 
13th  century,  when  the  spirit  of  religious  persecution  had 
begun  to  possess  all  Europe  with  a  dark  and  cruel  madness,  the 
doctrine  of  witchcraft  revived  with  all  its  barbaric  vigour.^ 
That  the  guilt  of  thus  bringing  down  Europe  intellectually 
and  morally  to  the  level  of  negro  Africa  lies  in  the  main 
upon  the  Roman  Church,  the  bulls  of  Gregory  IX. 
and  Innocent  VIII.,  and  the  records  of  the  Holy 
Inquisition,  are  conclusive  evidence  to  prove.  To  us  here 
the  main  interest  of  mediaeval  witchcraft  lies  in  the  extent 
and  accuracy  with  which  the  theory  of  survival  explains  it. 
In  the  very  details  of  the  bald  conventional  accusations  that 
were    sworn    against   the    witches,    there    may    be    traced 


»  Du  Chaillu,  '  Ashango-land,'  pp.  428,  435  ;  Burton,  'Central  Afr.,'  vol  i 
pp.  57,  113,  121. 

-  See  Griinin,  '  D.  M.'  ch.  xxxiv.  ;  Lecky,  'Hist,  of  Rationiilimn,'  vol.  i. 
chap.  i.  ;  Horst,  'Zauber-Bibliotliek  ;'  'Tho  Pope  and  the  Council,'  by 
•  Janus, '  xviL 


uo 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


I.     I 


'■^■ 


}''i 


tradition  often  hardly  modified  from  barbarous  atd  savage 
times.  They  raised  storms  by  magic  rites,  they  had  charma 
against  the  hurt  of  weapons,  they  had  their  assemblies  on 
wild  heath  and  mountain-top,  they  could  ride  through  the 
air  on  beasts  and  even  turn  into  witch-cats  and  were-wolves 
themselves,  they  had  familiar  spirits,  they  had  intercourse 
with  incubi  and  succubi,  they  conveyed  thorns,  pins,  feathers, 
and  such  things  into  their  victims'  bodies,  they  caused  disease 
by  demoniacal  possession,  they  could  bewitch  by  spells  and 
the  evil  eye,  by  practising  on  images  and  symbols,  on  food 
and  propert3\  Now  all  this  is  sheer  survival  from  prse-Chris- 
tian  -iges,  "  in  errore  paganorum  revolvitur,"  as  Burchard 
of  Worms  said  of  the  superstition  of  his  time.^  Two  of  the 
most  familiar  devices  used  against  the  medieval  witches  may 
serve  to  show  the  plnce  in  civilization  of  the  whole  craft. 
The  Oriental  jinn  are  in  such  deadly  terror  of  iron,  that 
its  very  name  is  a  charm  against  them;  and  so  in  European 
folklore  iron  drives  away  fairies  and  elves,  and  destroys 
their  power.  They  are  essentially,  it  seems,  creatures 
beloufifing  to  the  ancient  Stone  Age,  and  the  new  metal  is 
hateful  and  hurtful  to  them.  Now  as  to  iron,  witches  are 
brought  under  the  same  category  as  elves  and  nightmares. 
Iron  instruments  keep  them  at  bay,  and  especially  iron 
horseshoes  have  been  chosen  for  this  purpose,  as  half  the 
stable  doors  in  England  still  show.'^  Again,  one  of  the  best 
known  of  English  witch  ordeals  is  the  trial  by  "fleeting" 
or  swimming.  Bound  hand  and  foot,  the  accused  was  flung 
into  deep  water,  to  sink  if  innocent  and  swim  if  guilty,  and 
in  the  latter  case,  as  Hudibras  has  it,  to  be  hanged  only  for 
not  being  drowned.  King  James,  who  seems  to  have  had 
a  notion  of  the  real  primitive  meaning  of  this  rite,  says  in 
his  Daemonology,  "  It  appeares  that  God  hath  appointed 


'  See  also  Dasent,  'Iiitrod.  to  Norse  Tales;'  Maury,  '  Magie,  etc.,'ch.  vii. 

'  Laiip,  'Thousand  and  One  Niglits,' vol.  i.  p.  30;  Grimm,  '  D.  M.' pp. 
435,  465,  1056;  Bastian,  'Mensch.'  vol.  ii.  pp.  265,  287  ;  vol.  iii.  p.  204; 
D.  Wilson,  '  Arclioeolog.  of  Scotland,'  p.  439  ;  Wuttke,  •  Volksaberglaube,' 
pp.  16,  20,  122,  220. 


M  ■  I:   i 


Ik 


1   ii 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURK 


141 


, " 


ig 


,d 
n 

Id 


for  a  supernatural  signe  of  the  monstrous  impietie  of 
witches,  that  the  water  shall  refuse  to  receive  them  in  her 
bosom  that  have  shaken  off  them  the  sacred  water  of 
baptism,"  &.c.  Now,  in  early  German  history  this  same 
trial  by  water  was  well  known,  and  its  meaning  recognized 
to  be  that  tlie  conscious  element  rejects  the  guilty  (si  aqua 
ilium  vehit  innoxium  receperit — innoxii  submerguntur 
aqua,  culpabiles  supernatant).  Already  in  the  9th  century  the 
laws  were  prohibiting  this  practice  as  a  relic  of  superstition. 
Lastly,  the  same  trial  by  water  is  recognized  as  one  of  the 
regular  judicial  ordeals  in  the  Hindu  code  of  Manu  ;  if  tlio 
water  does  not  cause  the  accused  to  float  when  plunged  into 
it,  his  oath  is  true.  As  this  ancient  Indian  body  of  laws 
was  itself  no  doubt  compiled  from  materials  of  still  earlier 
date,  we  may  venture  to  take  the  corres})ondence  of  the 
water-ordeal  among  the  European  and  Asiatic  branches  of 
the  Aryan  race  as  carrying  back  its  origin  to  a  period  of 
remote  antifjuit}'.^ 

Let  us  hope  tliat  if  the  belief  in  present  witchcraft,  and 
the  persecution  necessarily  ensuing  upon  such  belief,  once 
more  come  into  prominence  in  the  civiUzed  world,  tbey  may 
appear  in  a  milder  shape  than  heretofore,  and  be  kept  down 
by  stronger  humanity  and  tolerance.  But  any  one  who 
fancies  from  their  present  disappearance  that  they  have 
necessarily  disappeared  for  ever,  must  have  read  history  to 
little  purpose,  and  has  3'et  to  learn  that  *'  revival  in  culture" 
is  something  more  than  an  empty  pedantic  phrase.  Our 
own  time  has  revived  a  group  of  beliefs  and  practices  which 
have  their  roots  deep  in  the  very  stratum  of  early  philosoi)hy 
where  witchcraft  makes  its  first  appearance.  This  group 
of  beliefs  and  practices  constitutes  what  is  now  commonly 
known  as  Spiritualism. 

Witchcraft  and  Spiritualism  have  existed  for  thousands 
of  years  in  a  closeness  of  union  not  unfairly  typified  in  this 

'  Brand,  'Pop.  Ant.' vol.  iii.  pp.  1—43;  "Wuttke,  •  Volksaberglaube,' p. 
60  ;  Grimm,  '  Deutsche  Rechtsaltertliiimer,'  p.  923  ;  Pictet,  '  Origines  ludo* 
Europ.'  part  ii.  p.  46b;  Manu,  viii.,  114—6  ;  see  Plin.  viL  2. 


'i  '' 


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SURVIVAL    IN    CULTUllE. 


verse  from  John  Bale's  16th-century  Interlude  concerning 
Nature,  which  brings  under  one  head  the  art  of  bewitching 
vegetables  and  poultry,  and  causing  supernatural  movement 
of  stools  and  crockery. 

"  ThejT  wells  I  can  up  drye, 
Cause  trees  and  herbes  to  dye, 
And  slee  all  pulterye, 

Whereas  men  doth  me  move : 
I  can  make  stoles  to  daunco 
And  earthen  pottes  to  praunce, 
That  none  shall  them  enhaunce, 

And  do  but  cast  my  glove." 

The  same  intellectual  movement  led  to  the  decline  of  both 
witchcraft  and  spiritualism,  till,  early  in  the  present  century, 
men  thought  that  both  were  dying  or  all  but  dead  together. 
Now,  however,  not  only  are  spiritualists  to  be  counted  by 
tens  of  thousands  in  America  and  England,  but  there  are 
among  them  several  men  of  distinguished  mental  power.  I 
am  well  aware  that  the  problem  of  the  so-called  "  spirit- 
manifestations  "  is  one  to  be  discussed  on  its  merits,  in 
order  to  arrive  at  a  distinct  opinion  how  far  it  may  be  con- 
cerned with  facts  insufficiently  appreciated  and  explained  by 
science,  and  how  far  with  superstition,  delusion,  and  sheer 
knavery.  Such  investigation,  pursued  by  careful  observation 
in  a  scientific  spirit,  would  seem  apt  to  throw  light  on  some 
most  interesting  psychological  questions.  But  though  it 
lies  beyond  my  scope  to  examine  the  spiritualistic  evidence 
for  itself,  the  ethnographic  view  of  the  matter  has,  neverthe- 
less, its  value.  This  shows  modern  spiritualism  to  be  in 
great  measure  a  direct  revival  from  the  regions  of  savage 
philosoph)'  and  peasant  folklore.  It  is  not  a  simple  ques- 
tion of  the  existence  of  certain  phenomena  of  mind  and 
matter.  It  is  that,  in  connexion  with  these  phenomena,  a 
great  philosophic-religious  doctrine,  flourishing  in  the  lower 
culture  but  dwindling  in  the  higher,  has  re-established  itself 
in  full  vigour.  The  world  is  again  swarming  with  intelligent 
and  powerful  disembodied   spiritual  beings,  whose   direct 


i.l 


SLTRVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


143 


action  on  thought  and  matter  is  again  conlideritly  asserted, 
as  in  those  times  and  countries  where  physical  science  had 
not  as  yet  so  far  succeeded  in  extruding  these  spirits  and 
their  influences  from  the  system  of  nature. 

Apparitions  have  regained  the  place  and  meaning  which 
they  held  from  the  level  of  the  lower  races  to  that  of  mediffi- 
val  Europe.  The  regular  ghost-stories,  in  which  spirits  of 
the  dead  walk  visibl}'  and  have  intercourse  with  corporeal 
men,  are  now  restored  and  cited  with  new  examples  as 
"  glimpses  of  the  night-side  of  nature,"  nor  have  these 
stories  changed  either  their  strength  to  those  who  are  dis- 
posed to  believe  them,  or  their  weakness  to  those  who  are 
not.  As  of  old,  men  live  now  in  habitual  intercourse  with 
the  spirits  of  the  dead.  Necromancy  is  a  religion,  and  the 
Chinese  manes-worshipper  may  see  the  outer  barbarians 
come  back,  after  a  heretical  interval  of  a  few  centuries,  into 
sympathy  with  his  time-honoured  creed.  As  the  sorcerers 
of  barbarous  tribes  lie  in  bodily  lethargy  or  sleep  while 
their  souls  depart  on  distant  journeys,  so  it  is  not  uncommon 
in  modern  spiritualistic  narratives  for  persons  to  be  in  an  in- 
sensible state  when  their  apparitions  visit  distant  places, 
whence  they  bring  back  information,  and  where  they  com- 
municate with  the  living.  The  spirits  of  the  living  as  well 
as  of  the  dead,  the  souls  of  Strauss  and  Carl  Vogt  as  well  as 
of  Augustine  and  Jerome,  are  summoned  by  mediums  to 
distant  spirit-circles.  As  Dr.  Bastian  remarks,  if  any  cele- 
brated man  in  Europe  feels  himself  at  some  moment  in  a 
melancholy  mood,  he  may  console  himself  with  the  idea  that 
his  soul  has  been  sent  for  to  America,  to  assist  at  the 
"  rough  fixings  "  of  some  backwoodsman.  Fifty  years  ago, 
Dr.  Macculloch,  in  his  '  Description  of  the  Western  Islands 
of  Scotland,'  wrote  thus  of  the  famous  Highland  second- 
sight :  **  In  fact  it  has  undergone  the  fate  of  witchcraft; 
ceasing  to  be  believed,  it  has  ceased  to  exist."  Yet  a  gene- 
ration later  he  would  have  found  it  reinstated  in  a  far 
larger  range  of  society,  and  under  far  better  circumstances 
of  learning  and  material  prosperity.     Among  the  influences 


'    t)l 


144 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


which  have  combined  to  bring  about  the  spiritualistic  renai* 
sauce,  a  prominent  place  may,  I  think,  be  given  to  the  eflect 
produced  on  the  religious  mind  of  Europe  and  America  by 
the  intensely  animistic  teachings  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg, 
in  the  last  century.  The  position  of  this  remarkable 
visionary  as  to  some  of  the  particular  spiritualistic  doctrines 
may  be  judged  of  by  the  following  statements  from  *  The 
True  Christian  Religion.'  A  man's  spirit  is  his  mind,  which 
lives  after  death  in  complete  human  form,  and  this  spirit 
may  be  conveyed  from  place  to  place  while  the  body  re- 
mains at  rest,  as  on  some  occasions  happened  to  Swedenborg 
himself.  *'  I  have  conversed,"  he  says,  '*  with  all  my  rela- 
tions and  friends,  likewise  witli  kings  and  princes,  and  men 
of  learning,  after  their  departure  out  of  this  life,  and  this 
now  for  twenty-seven  years  without  interruption."  And 
foreseeing  that  many  who  read  his  '  Memorable  -Relations,' 
will  believe  them  to  be  fictions  of  imagination,  he  protests  in 
truth  they  are  not  fictions,  but  were  really  seen  and  heard  ; 
not  seen  and  heard  in  any  state  of  mind  in  sleej),  but  in  a 
state  of  complete  wakefulness.^ 

I  shall  have  to  speak  elsewhere  of  some  of  the  doctrines 
of  modern  spiritualism,  where  they  seem  to  fall  into  their 
places  in  the  study  of  Animism.  Here,  as  a  means  of  illus- 
trating the  relation  of  the  newer  to  the  older  spiritualistic 
ideas,  I  projiose  to  glance  over  the  ethnography  of  two  of  the 
most  popular  means  of  communicating  with  the  spirit-world, 
by  rapping  and  writing,  and  two  of  the  prominent  spirit- 
manifestations,  the  feat  of  rising  in  the  air,  and  the  trick  of 
the  Davenport  Brothers. 

The  elf  who  goes  knocking  and  routing  about  the  house 
at  night,  and  whose  special  German  name  is  the  "  Polter- 
geist," is  an  old  and  famiUar  personage  in  European  folklore.' 
From  of  old,  such  unexplained  noises  have  been  ascribed  to 
the  agency  of  personal  spirits,  who  more  often  than  not  are 

*  Swedenborg,  'The  True  Christian  Religion,'  London,  1856,  Nos.  166, 167* 
281,  851. 
'  Grimm,  'Deutsche  Myth.' pp.  473,  481. 


SURVIVAL. IN    CULTUKE. 


145 


ise 

jr- 
s 

• 

Ito 
ire 

67, 


coiisio  red  human  souls.  The  uiodern  Dayaks,  Siamese,  and 
Singhalese  agree  with  the  Esths  as  to  such  routing  and  rap- 
ping being  caused  by  spirits.^  Knockings  may  be  considered 
mysterious  but  harmless,  like  those  which  in  Swabia  and 
Franconia  are  expected  during  Advent  on  the  Anklopierleins- 
Nachte,  or  "  Little  Knockers'  Nights."^  Or  they  may  be 
useful,  as  when  the  Welsh  miners  think  that  the  ''knockers" 
they  hear  underground  are  indicating  the  rich  veins  of  lead 
and  silver.^  Or  they  may  be  simply  annoying,  as  when,  in 
tlie  ninth  century,  a  malignant  spirit  infested  a  parish  by 
laiocking  at  the  walls  as  if  with  a  luimmer,  but  being  over- 
come with  litanies  and  holy  water,  confessed  itself  to  be 
the  familiar  of  a  certain  wicked  priest,  and  to  liave  been  iu 
hiding  under  his  cloak.  Thus,  in  the  seventeentli  century, 
the  famous  demon-drummer  of  Tedworth,  conunemorated 
by  Glanvil  in  the  '  Saducismus  Triumphatus,'  tluunped 
about  the  doors  and  the  outside  of  the  house,  and  "for  an 
hour  together  it  would  beat  lioandheads  and  Cuckolds,  the 
Tat-too,  and  several  other  Points  of  War,  as  well  as  any 
Drummer."*  But  popular  philosophy  has  mostl}-  attached 
to  such  m3'sterious  noises  a  foreboding  of  death,  the  knock 
being  held  as  a  signal  or  summons  among  spirits  as  am  jug 
men.  The  liomans  considered  that  the  genius  of  death 
thus  ^  nnounced  his  coming.  Modern  folklore  .holds  either 
that  a  knocking  or  rumbling  in  the  floor  is  an  omen  of  a 
death  about  to  happen,  or  tliat  dying  persons  themselves 
announce  their  dissolution  to  their  friends  in  such  strange 
sounds.  The  English  rule  takes  in  both  cases  :  "  Three  loud 
and  distinct  knoclvs  at  the  bed's  head  of  a  sick  person,  or  at 
the  bed's  head  or  door  of  any  of  his  relations,  is  an  omen  of 
his  death."     We  happen  to  have  a  good  means  of  testing 


>  St  John,  'Far  East,"  \  j1.  L  p.  82;  Bastian,  ' Psychologie,'  p.  Ill ;  'OcstL 
Asiei),'  vol.  iii.  pp.  23J,  259,  288;  Boeder,  'Elisten  Abuiylaube,'  p.  147. 

*  Bastian,  'Menscli,'  vol.  ii.  p.  74. 

*  Brand,  vol.  ii.  p.  486. 

*  Glanvil,   '  SaUucisiims  Triumphatus,'  part  ii     The  invisible  drumuiej 
•ppears  to  have  been  one  William  Drury  ;  see  '  Pepys'  Diary,'  vol.  i.  p.  2^7. 

VOL.   1.  I- 


If 


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SURVIVAL    IN.  CULTURE. 


\':''4' 


['   ! 


the  amount  of  actual  correspondence  between  omen  and 
event  necessary  to  establisli  these  rules  :  the  illogical  people 
"VN-ho  were  (and  still  are)  able  to  discover  a  connexion  between 
the  ticking  of  the  **  death-watch  "  beetle  and  an  ensuing 
death  in  the  house,  no  doubt  found  it  equally  easy  to  give  a 
prophetic  interpretation  to  any  other  mysterious  knocks.^ 
There  is  a  story,  dated  1534,  of  a  ghost  that  answered 
questions  by  knocking  in  the  Catholic  Church  of  Orleans, 
and  deuumdod  the  removal  of  the  provost's  Lutheran  wife, 
who  had  been  buried  there  ;  but  the  affair  proved  to  be  a 
trick  of  a  I'i'anciscan  friar.*  The  system  of  working  an 
alphabet  by  counted  raps  is  a  device  familiar  to  prison-cells, 
where  it  has  long  been  at  once  the  despair  of  gaolers  and  an 
evidence  of  the  diffusion  of  education  even  among  the 
criminal  classes.  Thus  when,  in  18-47,  the  celebrated 
rappings  began  to  trouble  the  township  of  Arcadia  in  the 
State  of  New  York,  the  Fox  family  of  Rochester,  founders 
of  the  modern  spiritual  movement,  had  on  the  one  hand 
only  to  revive  the  ancient  prevalent  belief  in  spirit-rappings, 
which  had  almost  fallen  into  the  limbo  of  discredited  super- 
stitions, while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  system  of  communi- 
cation with  the  spirits  was  ready  made  to  their  hand.  The 
system  of  a  rapping-alphabet  remains  in  full  use,  and 
numberless  specimens  of  messages  thus  received  are  in 
print,  possibly  the  longest  being  a  novel,  of  which  I  can 
only  give  the  title,  '  Juanita,  Nouvelle  par  une  Chaise.  A 
ITmprimerie  du  Gouvernement,  Basse  Terre  (Guadeloupe), 
1853.'  In  the  recorded  communications,  names,  dates,  etc. 
are  often  alleged  to  have  been  stated  under  remarkable 
circumstances,  while  the  style  of  thought,  language,  and 
spelling  fits  with  the  intellectual  quality  of  the  medium. 
A  large  proportion  of  the  communications  being  obviously 
false  and  silly,  even  when  the  "  spirit  "  has  announced  itself 


!■ 


»  Brand,  vol.  iii.  i^p.  225,  233  ;  Grimm,  pp.  801,  1089,  1141  ;  Wuttke,  pp. 
88—9,  208  ;  Shortland,  'Trads.  of  New  Zealand,'  p.  137  (omluous  ticking  of 
insect,  doubtful  whether  idea  native,  or  introduced  by  foreigners). 

*  r>ftstian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  B93. 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


147 


.- 
4 


v» 


liif 


of 


in  the  name  of  some  great  statesman,  moralist,  or  pliilo- 
soplier  of  the  past,  the  theory  lias  been  adopted  by  spiritua- 
lists that  foolish  or  lying  spirits  are  a[»t  to  personate  those 
of  higher  degree,  and  give  messages  in  their  names. 

Spirit- writing  is  of  two  kinds,  according  as  it  is  done 
with  or  without  a  ma+erial  instrument.  The  first  kind  is  in 
full  practice  in  China,  vliere,  like  other  rites  of  divination, 
it  is  probably  ancient.  It  is  called  "  descending  of  the 
pencil,"  and  is  especial. y  used  by  the  literary'  classes. 
AVhen  a  Chinese  wishes  :o  consult  a  god  in  this  way,  he 
sends  for  \  professional  medium.  Before  the  image  of  the 
god  are  set  candles  and  incense,  and  an  offering  of  tea  or 
mock  money.  In  front  of  this,  on  another  table,  is  placed 
an  oblong  tray  of  dry  sand.  The  writing  instrument  is  a 
V-shaped  wooden  handle,  two  or  three  feet  long,  with  a 
wooden  tooth  fixed  at  its  point.  Two  persons  hold  this 
instrument,  each  gr;isi)ing  one  leg  of  it,  and  the  point 
resting  in  the  sand.  Proper  prayers  and  charms  induce 
the  god  to  manifest  his  presence  by  a  movement  of  tlie 
point  in  the  sand,  and  thus  the  response  is  written,  and 
there  only  remains  the  somewhat  difficult  and  doubtful  task 
of  deciphering  it.  To  what  state  of  opinion  the  rite 
belongs  may  be  judged  from  this  :  when  the  sacred  apricot- 
tree  is  to  be  robbed  of  a  branch  to  make  the  spirit-pen,  an 
apologetic  inscription  is  scratched  upon  the  trunk. ^  Not- 
withstanding theological  differences  between  China  and 
England,  the  art  of  spirit-writing  is  much  the  same  in 
the  two  countries.  A  kind  of  "  planchette "  seems  to 
have  been  known  in  Europe  in  the  sev-enteenth  century.^ 
The  instrument,  which  may  now  be  bought  at  the  toy-shops, 
is  a  heart-shaped  board  some  seven  inches  long,  resting  on 
thre'^  supports,  of  which  the  two  at  the  wide  end  are  castors, 
and  the  third  at  the  pointed  end  is  a  pencil  thrust  through 

1  Doolittle,  'Chinese,' vol.  ii.  p.  112;  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asion,'  vol.  uL  p. 
252  ;  •Peychologio,'  p.  159. 

2  Tochla,    'Aurifontina    Chymica,'   cited    by   K.    R.    H.    Mackenzie,    in 
•Spiritualist,'  Mar.  15,  1870. 

L  2 


"I 


•n 


148 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


I  I 


u 


a  hole  in  the  board.  The  instruinent  is  placed  on  a  sheet 
of  paper,  and  worked  by  two  persons  laying  their  fingers 
lightly  on  it,  and  waiting  till,  without  conscious  eti'ort  of  the 
operators,  it  moves  and  writes  answers  to  questions.  It  is 
not  everybody  who  has  the  faculty  of  spirit-writing,  but  a 
powerful  medium  will  write  alone.  Such  mediums  some- 
times consider  themselves  acted  on  by  some  power  separate 
from  themselves,  in  fact,  possessed. 

Ecclesiastical  history  commemorates  a  miracle  at  the 
close  of  the  Nicene  Council.  Two  bishops,  Chrysanthus 
and  Mysonius,  had  died  during  its  sitting,  and  the  remain- 
ing crowd  of  Fathers  brought  the  acts,  signed  b}'  themselves, 
to  the  tomb,  addressed  the  deceased  bishops  as  if  still  alive, 
and  left  the  document.  Next  day,  returning,  they  found 
the  two  signatures  added,  to  this  effect : — "  We,  Chrysan- 
thus and  Mysonius,  consenting  with  all  the  Fathers  in  the 
holy  first  and  oecumenical  Nicene  Synod,  although  translated 
from  the  body,  have  also  signed  the  volume  with  our  own 
hands."  ^  Such  spirit-writing  without  material  instrument 
has  lately  been  renewed  by  the  Baron  de  Guldenstubbe. 
This  writer  confirms  by  new  evidence  the  truth  of  the 
tradition  of  all  peoples  as  to  souls  of  the  dead  keej)ing  up 
their  connexion  with  their  mortal  remains,  and  haunting  the 
places  where  they  dwelt  "during  their  terrestrial  incarna- 
tion." Thus  Francis  1.  manifests  himself  principally  at 
Fontainebleau,  while  Louis  XV.  and  Marie-Antoinette  roam 
about  the  Trianons.  Moreover,  if  pieces  of  blank  paper  be 
set  out  in  suitable  places,  the  sjurits,  enveloped  in  their 
ethereal  bodies,  will  concentrate  by  their  force  of  will 
electric  currents  on  the  paper,  and  so  form  written 
characters.  The  Baron  publishes,  in  his  *  Pneumatologie 
Positive,'  a  mass  of  fac-similes  of  sj^irit-writings  thus 
obtained.  Julius  and  Augustus  Csesar  give  their  names 
near  their  statues  in  the  Louvre ;  Juvenal  produces  a 
ludicrous  attempt  at  a  copy  of  verses ;  H^loise  at  Pere-la- 

*  Nicephor.  Callist.  Ecclesiast.  Hist.  viii.  23  ;  Stanley,  '  Eastern  Church,' 
p.  172. 


i 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


149 


>nt 


he 


at 
iim 

be 
keir 


ten 


Chiiise  informs  tiii3  world,  in  modern  French,  that  Abelard 
jukI  she  are  united  and  happy ;  St.  Paul  writes  himself 
fA^ioTos  airocTToXov  (meaning,  we  may  suppose,  eXaxtoros  otto- 
oToAoji')  ;  and  Ilippokrates  the  physician  (who  spells  himself 
IlippoknitCs)  attended  M.  de  GuMenstubbe  at  his  lodgings 
in  Paris,  and  gave  him  a  signature  which  of  itself  cured  a 
sharp  attack  of  rheumatism  in  a  few  niiiuites.^ 

The  miracle  of  rising  and  Hoating  in  the  air  is  one  fully 
recognized  in  the  literature  of  ancient  India.  The  Buddhist 
saint  of  high  ascetic  rank  attains  the  power  called  "  perfec- 
tion "  (irdhi),  whereby  he  is  able  to  rise  in  the  air,  as  also  to 
overturn  '.he  tarth  and  t.top  the  sun.  Having  this  power, 
the  saint  exercises  it  by  the  mere  determination  of  his  will, 
his  body  becctiing  imponderons,  as  when  a  man  in  tlie 
common  human  st;  .3  deter/ i.ines  to  leap,  and  leaps.  Buddh- 
ist annals  relate  the  perfot  a.anee  of  the  miraculous  suspen- 
sion b}'  Gautama  himsel  ,  as  well  s  by  other  saints,  as,  for 
example,  his  ancfsco;  Maha  Sami.uita,  who  could  thus  seat 
himself  in  the  au- witiiout  visible  suppo  t.  Even  without 
this  exalted  faculty,  it  is  considered  possible  to  rise  and 
move  in  the  air  by  an  effort  of  ecstatic  joy  (udwega  priti). 
A  remarkable  mention  of  this  feat,  as  said  to  be  peribrmed 
by  tlie  Indian  Braiunans,  occurs  in  the  third-century  bio- 
graphy of  Apollonius  of  Tyana  ;  these  Brahmans  are 
described  as  going  about  in  the  air  some  two  cubits  from 
the  ground,  not  for  the  sake  of  miracle  (such  ambition  they 
despised),  but  for  its  being  more  suitable  to  solar  rites.' 
njurors  were  professing  to  exliibit  this  miracle 
uie  Greeks  in  the  second  century,  as  witness 
Lucian's  jocular  account  of  the  Hyperborean   conjuior: — 


Foreigi 
among 


ms 
les 


lla- 


'  '  Pneumatolngie  Positive  et  Expdrimeiitale  ;  La  R(5alit^  des  Esprits  et  le 
Fh^nomene  Merveilleux  de  leur  Ecriture  Directe  demontr^s,*  par  lo  Baron 
L.  de  Guldenstubbe.     Paris,  1857. 

2  Hai-dy,  'Manual  of  Budhisni,'  pp.  38,  126,  150;  'Eastern  Monachisin, 
pp.  272,  285,  382  :  Kbppen,  'Rolifjioii  des  Baddl>a,'  vol.  i.  p.  412  ;  Bastian, 
'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  iii.  p.  390  ;  Philostrati  Vita  ApoUon.  Tyan.  iii.  15      See 
the  mention  among  the  Saadhs  of  India  (17th  century),  i'l  Traut,  in  '  Missionary 
-Register,'  July,  ls.20,  pp.  294—6. 


150 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


•  (  ' 


i' 


'  II 


Tliou  avt  joking,  said  Kleodemos,  but  I  was  once  more  in- 
credulous than  thou  about  such  things,  fori  thought  nothing 
could  have  persuaded  me  to  believe  them ;  but  when  I  first 
saw  that  foreign  barbarian  flying — he  was  of  tlie  Hyperbo- 
reans, he  said — I  believed,  and  was  overcome  in  spite  of  my 
resistance.  For  what  was  I  to  do,  when  I  saw  him  carried 
through  the  air  in  daylight,  and  walking  on  the  water,  and 
jjassing  leisurely  and  slowly  throu^li  the  fire  ?  What  ! 
(said  his  interlocutor),  you  saw  the  Hyperborean  man  flying, 
and  walking  on  the  water  ?  To  be  sure,  said  he,  and  he  had 
on  undressed  leather  brogues  as  they  generall}'  wear  them  ; 
but  what's  the  use  of  talking  of  such  trifles,  considering 
what  other  manifestations  he  showed  us, — sending  loves, 
callhig  up  daiuions,  raising  the  dead,  and  bringing  in  Hekate 
herself  visibly,  and  drawing  down  the  moon  ?  "  Kleodemos 
then  goes  on  to  relate  how  the  conjuror  first  had  liis  four 
minse  down  for  sacriticiid  expenses,  and  then  made  a  clay 
Cupid,  and  sent  it  flying  through  the  air  to  fetch  the  girl 
whom  Glaiikias  had  fallen  in  love  with,  and  presently,  lo 
and  behold,  there  she  was  "knocking  at  tlie  door!  "  The 
interlocutor,  however,  comments  in  a  sceptical  vein  on  the 
narrative.  It  was  scarce  needful,  he  says,  to  have  taken  the 
trouble  to  send  for  the  girl  with  clay,  and  a  magicnan  from 
the  Hyperboreans,  and  even  the  moon,  considering  that  for 
twenty  drachmas  she  would  have  let  herself  be  taken  to  the 
Hyperboreans  themselvos  ;  and  she  seems,  moreover,  to  have 
been  atfected  in  (juite  an  opposite  way  to  spirits,  for  whereas 
these  bein-s  take  fliglit  if  they  hear  the  noise  of  brass  or 
iron,  Chr^sis  no  sooner  hears  the  chink  o^  silver  anywhere, 
but  she  comes  toward  the  sound. ^  Another  earl}'  instance 
of  the  belief  in  miraculous  suspension  is  in  the  life  of 
lambliclius,  the  great  Neo-Platonist  mystic.  His  disciples, 
says  Eunapius,  told  him  they  had  heard  a  report  from  liis 
servants,  that  while  in  prayer  to  the  gods  he  had  been  lifted 
more  than  ten  cubits  from  the  ground,  his  hody  and  clothes 
changing  to  a  beautiful  golden  colour,  but  after  he  ceased 

'  Luciau.  Pliilupseudes,  13. 


f  <' 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


151 


lor 


from  prayer  his  body  became  as  before,  and  then  he  came 
down  to  the  ground  and  returned  to  the  society  of  his 
followers.  They  entreated  him  therefore,  "Why,  0  most 
divine  teacher,  why  dost  thou  do  such  things  by  thyself,  and 
not  let  us  partake  of  the  more  perfect  wisdom  ?  "  Then 
lamblichus,  though  not  given  to  laughter,  laughed  at  this 
story,  and  said  to  them,  "  It  was  no  fool  who  tricked  you 
thus,  but  the  thing  is  not  true."^ 

After  a  while,  the  prodigy  which  the  Platonist  disclaimed, 
became  a  usual  attribute  of  Christian  saints.  Thus  St. 
Richard,  then  chancellor  to  St.  Edmund,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  one  day  softly  opening  the  chapel  door,  to  see 
why  the  archbishop  did  not  come  to  dinner,  saw  him  raised 
high  in  the  air,  with  his  knees  bent  and  his  arms  stretched 
out ;  falling  gently  to  the  ground,  and  seeing  the  chancellor, 
he  complained  that  he  had  hindered  him  of  great  spiritual 
delight  and  comfort.  So  St.  Philip  Neri  used  to  be  some- 
times seen  raised  several  yards  from  the  ground  during  his 
rapturous  devotions,  with  a  bright  light  shining  from  his 
countenance.  St.  Ignatius  Loyola  is  declared  to  have  been 
raised  about  two  feet  under  the  same  circumstances,  and 
similar  legends  of  devout  ascetics  being  not  only  metaphori- 
cally but  materially  "  raised  above  the  earth  "  are  told  in  the 
lives  of  St.  Dominic,  St.  Dunstan,  St.  Theresa,  and  other 
less  known  saints.  In  the  last  century,  Dom  Calmet  speaks 
of  knowing  a  good  monk  who  rises  sometimes  from  the 
ground  and  remains  involuntarily  suspended,  especially  on 
seeing  some  devotional  image  or  hearing  some  devout 
prayer,  and  also  a  nun  who  has  often  seen  herself  raised  in 
spite  of  herself  to  a  certain  distance  from  the  earth.  Un- 
fortunately the  great  commentator  does  not  specify  any 
witnesses  as  having  seen  the  monk  and  nun  rise  in  the  air. 
If  they  only  thought  themselves  thus  elevated,  their  stories 
can  only  rank  with  that  of  the  young  man  mentioned  by  De 
Maistre,  who  so  often  seemed  to  himself  to  float  in  the  air, 
that  he  came  to  suspect  that  gravitation  might  not  be  natural 

'  Euuapius  ill  laiabl. 


!  >1 


>^^» 


I  ) 


152 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


Lii 


if 


to  man.^  The  hallucination  of  rising  and  floating  in  the  air 
is  extremely  common,  and  ascetics  of  all  religions  are  espe- 
cially liable  to  it. 

Among  modem  accounts  of  diabolic  possession,  also,  the 
rising  in  the  air  is  described  as  taking  place  not  subjectively 
but  objectively.  In  1657,  Richard  Jones,  a  sprightly  lad  of 
twelve  years  old,  living  at  Sliepton  Mjillet,  Avas  bewitched  by 
one  Jane  Brooks ;  he  was  seen  to  rise  in  the  air  and  pass 
over  a  garden  wall  some  thirty  j'ards,  and  at  other  times 
was  found  in  a  room  with  his  hands  flat  against  a  beam  at 
the  top  of  the  room,  and  his  body  two  or  three  feet  from  the 
groiuid,  nine  people  at  a  time  seeing  him  in  this  latter 
position.  Jane  Brooks  was  accordingly  condenmed  and 
executed  at  Chard  Assizes  in  March,  1C58.  Richard,  the 
Surre,  demoniac  of  1689,  was  hoisted  up  in  the  air  and  let 
down  by  Satan  ;  at  the  beginning  of  his  fits  he  was,  as  it  were, 
blown  or  snatched  or  borne  up  suddenly  from  his  chair,  as  if 
he  would  have  flown  away,  but  that  those  who  held  him  hung 
to  his  arms  and  legs  and  cluiij;  '  out  him.  One  account 
(not  the  official  medical  one)  of  the  demoniacal  possessions 
at  INIorzine  in  Savoy,  in  1864,  relates  that  a  patient  was  held 
suspended  in  the  air  by  an  invisible  force  during  some 
seconds  or  minutes  above  the  cemetery,  in  the  presence  of 
the  archbishop.*^  Modern  spiritualists  claim  this  power  as 
possessed  by  certain  distinguished  livhig  mediums,  who, 
indeed,  profess  to  rival  in  sober  fact  the  aerostatic  miracles 
of  Buddhist  and  Catholic  legend.  The  force  employed  is  of 
course  considered  to  be  that  of  the  spirits. 

'ihe  performances  of  tied  mediums  have  been  specially  re- 
presented in  England  by  the  Davenjjort  Brothers,  who  "  are 
generally  recognized  by  Spiritualists  as  genuine  media,  and 

'  Alban  Butler,  'Lives  of  the  Sainta,'  vol.  i.  p.  674  ;  Calmet,  'Diss,  sitr 
les  Apjiantions,  etc.,'cliap.  xxi.  ;  De  MaistiP,  '  Soiri'ea  de  St.  P^tcrsliourg,' 
vol.  li.  ii|i,  158,  175.  See  also  Bastian,  'Menscli,'  vol.  ii.  p.  678;  '  Psycho" 
logie,,'  p.  l.')9 

*  Glanvil,  Saducismus  Triumiihatus,'  part  ii.  ;  Hastian,  'Paychologio,*  p 
161. 


I 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


153 


lyre- 
"are 
and 


ls9.  8ur 

'sycho« 
tie,'  p 


attribute  the  reverse  opinion  so  deeply  rooted  in  the  public 
mind,  to  the  untruthfulness  of  the  London  and  many  other 
newspapers."  The  performers  were  bound  fast  and  shut  by 
themselves  in  a  dark  cabinet,  with  musical  instruments, 
whence  not  only  musical  sounds  proceeded,  but  the  coats  of 
the  mediums  were  taken  off  and  replaced ;  yet  on  inspection 
their  bodies  were  discovered  still  bound.  The  spirits  would 
also  release  the  bound  mediums  from  their  cords,  however 
carefully  tied  about  thera.^  Now  the  idea  of  supernatural 
unbinding  is  very  ancient,  vouched  for  as  it  is  by  no  less  a 
personage  than  the  crafty  Odysseus  himself,  in  his  adventure 
on  board  the  ship  of  the  Thesprotians  : 

"Me  on  the  well-bonchod  vessel,  strongly  bound, 
They  leave,  and  snatch  their  meal  upon  the  beach. 
But  to  my  help  the  gods  themsi'lves  unwound 
My  cords  with  ease,  though  firmly  twisted  round.'' 

In  early  English  chronicle,  we  find  it  in  a  story  told  by  the 
Venerable  Bede.  A  certain  Imma  was  found  all  but  dead 
on  the  iield  of  battle,  and  taken  prisoner,  but  when  he  began 
to  recover  and  was  put  in  bonds  to  prevent  his  escaping,  no 
sooner  did  his  binders  leave  him  but  he  was  loose  again. 
The  earl  who  owned  him  inquired  whether  he  had  about 
him  such  "  loosening  letters  "  (literas  solutorias)  as  tales 
were  told  of;  the  man  replied  that  he  knew  nought  of  such 
arts  ;  yet  when  his  owner  sold  him  to  another  master,  there 
was  still  no  binding  him.  The  received  explanation  of  this 
strange  power  was  emphatically  a  spiritual  one.  His  brother 
had  sought  for  his  dead  body,  and  finding  another  like  him, 
buried  it  and  proceeded  to  say  masses  for  his  brother's  soul, 
by  the  celebration  whereof  it  came  to  pass  that  no  one 
(!ould  fasten  him,  for  he  was  out  of  bonds  again  directly. 
So  they  ^ent  him  home  to  Kent,  whence  he  duly  returned 
his  ransom,  and  his  story,  it  is  related,  stimulated  many  to 
devotion,  who  understood  by  it  how  salutary  are  masses  to 


»  'Spiritualist,' Feb.  15,  1870. 
New  Yorlc,  lbG4. 


Orrin  Abbott,  'The  Davenport  Brothem,' 


Pi 


:  f 

1 
1 

1 

!      I. 


I  w 


t  ,u 


f, 


154 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


I 


the  redemption  both  of  soul  and  body.  Again,  there  pre- 
vailed in  Scotland  up  to  the  hist  century  this  notion  :  when 
the  lunatics  who  had  been  brought  to  St.  Fillan's  Pool  to  be 
bathed,  were  laid  bound  in  the  neighbouring  church  next 
night,  if  they  were  found  loose  in  the  morning  their  re- 
covery was  expected,  but  if  at  dawn  they  were  still  bound, 
their  cure  was  doubtful. 

The  untying  trick  performed  among  savages  is  so  similar 
to  that  of  our  mountebanks,  that  when  we  find  the  North 
American  Indian  jugglers  doing  both  this  and  the  familiar 
trick  of  breatliing  fire,  we  are  at  a  loss  to  judge  whether 
they  inherited  these  two  feats  from  their  savage  ancestors, 
or  borrowed  them  fror  the  white  men.  The  point  is  not, 
however,  the  mere  performance  of  the  untying  trick,  but  its 
being  attributed  to  the  help  of  spiritual  beings.  This 
notion  is  thoroughl}'  at  home  in  savage  culture.  -It  comes 
out  well  in  the  Esquimaux'  accounts  which  date  from  early 
in  the  18th  century.  Cranz  thus  describes  the  Greenland 
angekok  setting  out  on  his  mystic  journey  to  heaven  and 
hell.  When  he  has  drummed  awhile  and  made  all  sorts  of 
wondrous  contortions,  he  is  himself  bound  with  a  thong  by 
one  of  his  pupils,  his  head  between  his  legs,  and  his  hands 
behind  his  back.  All  the  lamps  in  the  house  are  put  out, 
and  the  windows  darkened,  for  no  one  must  see  him  hold 
intercourse  with  his  spirit,  no  one  must  move  or  even  scratch 
his  head,  that  the  spirit  may  not  be  interfered  with — or 
rather,  says  the  missionary,  that  no  one  may  catch  him  at 
his  trickery,  for  there  is  no  going  up  to  heaven  in  broad 
daylight.  At  last,  after  strange  noises  have  been  heard, 
and  a  visit  has  been  received  or  paid  to  the  torngak  or 
spirit,  the  magician  reappears  unbound,  but  pale  and 
excited,  and  gives  an  account  of  his  adventures.  Castren's 
account  of  the  similar  proceedings  of  the  Siberian  shamans 
is  as  follows  :  "  They  are  practised,"  he  says,  "  in  all  sorts 
of  conjuring-tricks,  by  which  they  know  how  to  dazzle  the 
simple  crowd,  and  inspire  greater  trust  in  themselves.  One 
of  the  most  usual  juggleries  of  the  shamans  in  the  Govern- 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


155 


ms 


M 


-or 

at 

)ad 

ivd, 

or 
Lnd 

n's 

Irts 
Ithe 
>ue 
fera- 


ment  of  Tomsk  consists  of  the  following  hocus-pocus,  a 
wonder  to  the  Russians  as  well  as  to  the  Samoieds.  The 
shaman  sits  down  on  the  wrong  side  of  a  dry  reindeer-hide 
spread  in  the  middle  of  the  floor.  There  he  lets  himself  be 
bound  hand  and  foot  by  the  assistants.  The  shutters  are 
closed,  and  the  shaman  begins  to  invoke  his  ministering 
spirits.  All  at  once  there  arises  a  mysterious  gliostliness  in 
the  dark  space.  Voices  are  heard  from  different  parts, 
both  within  and  without  the  yurt,  while  on  the  dry  reindeer 
skin  there  is  a  rattling  and  drumming  in  regular  time. 
Bears  growl,  snakes  hiss,  and  squirrels  le.ap  about  in  the 
room.  At  last  this  uncanny  work  ceases,  and  the  audierrf 
impatiently  await  the  result  of  the  game.  A  few  moments 
pass  in  this  expectation,  and  behold,  the  shaman  walks  in 
free  and  unbound  from  outside.  No  one  doubts  that  it  was 
the  spirits  who  were  drumming,  growUng,  and  hissing,  who 
released  the  shaman  from  his  bonds,  and  who  carried  him 
by  secret  ways  out  of  the  yurt."^ 

On  the  whole,  the  ethnography  of  spiritualism  bears  on 
practical  opinion  somewhat  in  this  manner.  Beside  the 
question  of  the  absolute  truth  or  falsity  of  the  alleged 
possessions,  manes-oracles,  doubles,  brain-waves,  furniture 
movings,  and  floatings  in  the  air,  there  remains  the  history 
of  spiritualistic  belief  as  a  matter  of  opinion.  Hereby 
it  appears  that  the  received  spiritualistic  theory  of  the 
alleged  phenomena  belongs  to  the  philosophy  of  savages. 
As  to  such  matters  as  apparitions  or  possessions  this  is 
obvious,  and  it  holds  in  more  extreme  cases.  Suppose  a 
wild  North  American  Indian  looking  on  at  a  spirit-seance 
in  London.  As  to  the  presence  of  disembodied  spirits, 
manifesting  themselves  by  raps,  noises,  voices,  and  other 


'  Homer.  Odyss.  xiv.  345  (Worsley's  Trans.) ;  Boda,  '  Historia  Ecclesiaa- 
tica,'  iv.  22  ;  Grimm,  '  D.  M.,'  p.  1180  (an  old  German  loosing-chami  is  given 
from  the  Merseburg  MS.);  J.  Y.  Simpson,  in  'Proo.  Ant.  Soc.  Scotland,' 
vol.  iv.  ;  Keating,  '  Long's  Exp.  to  St.  Peter's  Hiver,'  vol.  ii.  p.  159  ;  Egcde, 
'Greenland,'  p.  189;  Cranz,  'GrOnland,'  p.  269;  Castr6n,  '  Reiseberichte," 
1846—9,  p.  173. 


i'lB 


ti, 


i        V 


m': 


hi. 


'  'I 
ill 


156 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


'I'  •\1l 


I  ,  i' 


Pi     I 


I! 


physical  actions,  the  savage  would  be  perfectly  at  home  in 
the  proceedings,  for  such  things  are  part  and  parcel  of  hia 
recognized  system  of  nature.  The  part  of  the  affair  really 
strange  to  him  would  be  the  introduction  of  such  arts  as 
spelling  and  writing,  which  do  belong  to  a  different  state  of 
civilization  from  his.  The  issue  raised  by  the  comparison 
of  savage,  barbaric,  and  civilized  spiritualism,  is  this  :  Do 
the  Red  Indian  medicine-man,  the  Tatar  necromancer,  the 
Highland  ghost-seer,  and  the  Boston  medium,  share  tho 
possession  of  belief  and  knowledge  of  the  highest  truth  and 
imj-yort,  which,  nevertheless,  the  great  intellectual  movement 
of  the  last  two  centuries  has  simply  thrown  aside  as  worth- 
less ?  Is  what  we  are  habitually  boasting  of  and  calling  new 
enlightenment,  then,  in  fact  a  decay  of  knowledge  ?  If  so,  this 
is  a  truly  remarkable  case  of  degeneration,  and  the  savages 
whom  some  ethnographers  look  on  as  degenerate  from  a 
higher  civilization,  may  turn  on  their  accusers  and  charge 
them  with  having  fallen  from  the  high  level  of  savage 
knowledge. 

Throughout  the  whole  of  this  varied  investigation,  whether 
of  the  dwindling  survival  of  old  culture,  or  of  its  bursting 
forth  afresh  in  active  revival,  it  may  perhaps  be  complained 
that  its  illustrations  should  be  chosen  so  much  among  things 
worn  out.  worthless,  frivolous,  c^  even  bad  with  downriglit 
harmful  10II3'.  It  is  in  fact  so,  and  I  have  taken  up  this 
course  of  argument  with  full  knowledge  and  intent.  For, 
indeed,  we  have  in  such  inquiries  continual  reason  to  be 
thankful  for  fools.  It  is  quite  wonderful,  even  if  we  hardly 
go  below  the  surface  of  the  subject,  to  see  how  large  a  share 
stupidit)^  md  unpractical  conservatism  and  dogged  supersti- 
tion have  had  in  preserving  for  us  traces  of  the  history  of 
our  race,  which  practical  utilitarianism  would  have  remorse- 
lessly swept  away.  The  savage  is  firmly,  obstinately  con- 
servative. No  man  appeals  with  more  unhesitating  confidence 
to  the  great  precedent-makers  of  the  past ;  the  wisdom  of 
his  ancestors  can  control  against  the  most  obvious  evidence 
his  own  opinions  and  actions.     We  listen  with  pity  to  the 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


157 


\rt 


'lit 


Ills 


be 

lire 

]ti- 

of 


)n- 
ice 
of 


rude  Indian  as  he  maintains  against  civilized  science  and 
experience  the  authority  of  his  rude  forefathers.  "We  smile 
at  the  Chinese  appealing  against  modern  innovation  to  the 
golden  precepts  of  Confucius,  who  in  his  time  looked  back 
with  the  same  prostrate  reverence  to  sages  still  more 
ancient,  counselling  his  disciples  to  follow  the  seasons  of 
Hea,  to  ride  in  the  carriage  of  Yin,  to  wear  the  ceremonial 
cap  of  Chow. 

The  nobler  tendency  of  advancing  culture,  and  above  all 
of  scientific  culture,  is  to  honour  the  dead  without  grovellin^:f 
before  them,  to  profit  by  the  past  without  sacrificing  tlio 
present  to  it.  Yet  even  the  modern  civilized  world  has  but 
half  learnt  this  lesson,  and  an  unprejudiced  survey  may  lead 
us  to  judge  how  many  of  our  ideas  and  customs  exist  rather 
by  being  old  than  by  being  good.  Now  in  dealing  with 
hurtful  superstitions,  the  proof  that  they  are  things  which 
it  is  the  tendency  of  savagery  to  produce,  and  of  higher 
culture  to  destroy,  is  accepted  as  a  fair  controversial 
argument.  The  mtre  historical  position  of  a  belief  or 
custom  may  raise  a  presumption  as  to  its  origin  which 
becomes  a  presumption  as  to  its  authenticity.  Dr.  Middle- 
ton's  celebrated  Letter  from  Rome  shows  cases  in  point. 
He  mentions  the  image  of  Diana  at  Ephesus  which  fell 
from  the  sky,  thereby  damaging  the  pretensions  of  the 
Calabrian  image  of  St.  Dominic,  which,  according  to  pious 
tradition,  was  likewise  brought  down  from  heaven.  Pie 
notices  that  as  the  blood  of  St.  Januarius  now  melts  miracu- 
lously without  heat,  so  ages  ago  the  priests  of  Gnatia  tried 
to  persuade  Horace,  on  his  road  to  Brundusium,  that  the 
frankincense  in  their  temple  had  the  habit  of  melting  in  like 
manner : 

"...  dohinc  Gnatia  Ij-mphis 
Iratis  exstructa  dedit  risusque  jocosque; 
Dum  flamma  sine  thura  liquoscere  limine  saoro, 
Fersuadere  cupit :  credat  Judseus  Apella ; 
Noneco.»» 


t  ■  I 

;  , 

i  I 

i  ■ 


;   \ 


i  fit 


't 


I'M 


jice 
[he 


1  Conyers  Middletoo,  'A  Letter  from  Rome/  1729  ;  Hor.  Sat  L  T.  98. 


;,  ::A 


i  .:! 


■>iAii»i^^iiiii^«  I  im^ 


»4-'-.    >H.' 


158 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


'riius  ethnographers,  not  without  a  certain  grim  satisfaction, 
may  at  times  find  means  to  make  stupid  and  evil  supersti- 
tions bear  witness  against  themselves. 

Moreover,  in  working  to  gain  an  insight  into  the  general 
laws  of  intellectual  movement,  there  is  practical  gain  in 
being  able  to  study  them  rather  among  antiquarian  relics  of 
no  intense  modern  interest,  than  among  those  seething 
problems  of  the  day  on  which  action  has  to  be  taken  amid 
ferment  and  sharp  strife.  Should  some  moralist  or  politi- 
cian speak  contemptuously  of  the  vanity  of  studying 
matters  without  practical  moinent,  it  will  generally  be 
found  that  his  own  mode  of  treatment  will  consist  in 
partizan  diatribes  on  the  questions  of  the  day,  a  proceeding 
l)ractical  enough,  especially  in  confirming  those  who  agree 
with  him  already,  but  the  extreme  opposite  to  the  scientific 
way  of  eliciting  truth.  The  ethnographer's  course,  again, 
should  be  like  that  of  the  anatomist  who  carries  on  his 
studies  if  possible  rather  on  dead  than  on  living  subjects ; 
vivisection  is  nervous  work,  and  the  humane  investigator 
hates  inflicting  needless  pain.  Thus  when  the  student  of 
culture  occupies  himself  in  viewing  the  bearings  of  exploded 
controversies,  or  in  unravelling  the  history  of  long-super- 
seded inventions,  he  is  gladly  seeking  his  evidence  rather 
in  such  dead  eld  histor}-^,  than  in  the  discussions  where  he 
and  those  he  lives  among  are  alive  with  intense  party  feel- 
ing, and  where  his  judgment  is  biassed  by  the  pressure  of 
personal  sympathy,  and  even  it  may  be  of  personal  gain  or 
loss.  So,  from  things  which  perhaps  never  were  of  high 
importance,  things  which  have  fallen  out  of  popular  signi- 
ficance, or  even  out  of  popular  memory,  he  tries  to  elicit 
general  laws  of  culture,  often  to  be  thus  more  easily  and 
fully  gained  than  in  the  arena  of  modern  philosophy  and 
politics. 

But  the  opinions  drawn  from  old  or  worn-out  culture  are 
not  to  be  left  lying  whore  they  were  shaped.  It  is  no  more 
reasonable  to  suppose  the  laws  of  mind  differently  con- 
stituted in  Australia  and  in  England,  in  the  time  of  the 


\ 


'i 


SURVIVAL    IN    CULTURE. 


159 


of 
or 

gli 
ni- 
cit 
.nd 
,nd 


cave-dwellers  and  in  the  time  of  the  builders  of  sheet-iron 
houses,  than  to  suppose  that  the  laws  of  chemical  combina- 
tion were  of  one  sort  in  the  time  of  the  coal-measures,  aiid 
are  of  another  now.  The  thing  that  has  been  will  be ;  and 
we  are  to  study  savages  and  old  nations  to  learn  the  laws 
that  under  new  circumstances  are  working  for  good  or  ill  in 
our  own  development.  If  it  is  needful  to  give  an  instance 
of  the  directness  with  which  antiquity  and  savagery  bear 
upon  our  modern  life,  let  it  be  taken  in  the  facts  just 
brought  forward  on  the  relation  of  ancient  sorcery  to  the 
belief  in  witchcraft  which  was  not  long  since  one  of  the 
gravest  facts  of  European  history,  and  of  savage  spiritualism 
to  beliefs  which  so  deeply  affect  our  civilization  now.  No 
one  who  can  see  in  these  cases,  and  in  many  others  to  be 
brought  before  him  in  these  volumes,  how  direct  and  close 
the  connexion  may  be  between  modern  culture  and  the 
condition  of  the  rudest  savage,  will  be  prone  to  accuse 
students  who  spend  their  labour  on  even  the  lowest  and 
most  trifling  facts  of  ethnography,  of  wasting  their  hours  in 
the  satisfaction  of  a  frivolous  curiosity. 


bl 


m 


k 


ire 
3re 
3n- 
ihe 


1  ■•' 

i  !' 


Ui 


l^i 


'f 


CHAPTER   V. 


■if  1 1 


."  I- 


'.      .  -■    -'III 


EMOTIONAL   AND   IMITATIVE   LANGUAGE. 

Element  of  directly  ex]>ressive  Sound  in  Lanmmge — Test  by  independent 
correspondence  in  distinct  langu.iges — Constituent  processes  of  Language 
— Gesture  — Expression    of    feature,    etc. — Emotional    Tune — Articulate 
Bonnds,  vowels  deterniined  by  musical  quality  and  i)itch,  consonants — 
Emphasis  and  Accent — Phrase-melody,  Kccitutive — Souml-Words — Inter- 
jections— Calls  to  Animals— Emotional  Chies — Sense- Words  formed  from 
Interjections — Affirmative  and  Negative  particles,  etc 
# 
In   carr3'ing   on   the   inquiry   into   the   development    of 
culture,  evidence  of  some  weight  is  to  be  gained  from  an 
examination  of  Language.     Comparing  the  grammars  and 
dictionaries  of  races    at  various    grades  of  civilization,   it 
appears  that,  in  the  great  art  of  speech,  the  educated  man 
at  this   day  substantially  uses  the  method  of  the   savage, 
only  expanded  and  improved  in  the  working  out  of  details. 
It  is  true  that  the  languages  of  the   Tasmanian  and  the 
Chinese,  of  the  Greenlander  and  the  Greek,  diii'er  variously 
in  structure ;   but  this  is  a  secondary  diiierence,  underlaid 
by  a  primary  similarity  in  method,  namely,  the  expression 
of  ideas  by  articulate  sounds  habitually  allotted  to  them. 
Now  all  languages  are  found  on  inspection  to  contain  some 
articulate  sounds  of  a  directly  natural  and  directly  intelli- 
gible kind.     These  are  sounds  of  inteijectional  or  imitative 
character,  which  have  their  meaning  not  by  inheritance  from 
parents  or  adoption  from  foreigners,  but  by  being  taken  up 
directly  from  the  world  of  sound  into  the  world  of  sense. 
Like  pantomimic  gestures,  they  are  capable  of  conveying  their 
meaning  of  themselves,  without  reference  to  the  particular 


it.: 


K.MOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


l(jl 


of 


sly 
aid 
ion 
!m. 
me 

live 
)m 
jup 
Ise. 
leir 
liar 


languiige  they  are  used  in  connexion  with.  From  the 
observation  of  these,  there  have  arisen  speculations  as  to 
the  origin  of  language,  treating  such  expressive  sounds  as 
the  fundamental  constituents  of  language  in  general,  and 
considering  those  of  them  which  are  still  plainly  recognizablt; 
as  having  remained  more  or  less  in  their  original  state,  long 
courses  of  adaptation  and  variation  having  produced  from 
such  the  great  mass  of  words  in  all  languages,  in  which  no 
connexion  between  idea  and  sound  can  any  longer  be 
certainly  made  out.  Thus  grew  up  doctrines  of  a  "natural" 
origin  of  language,  which,  dating  from  classic  times,  were 
developed  in  the  eighteenth  century  into  a  system  by  that 
powerful  thinker,  the  President  Charles  de  Brosses,  and  in 
our  own  time  are  being  expanded  and  solidified  by  a  school 
of  philologers,  among  whom  Mr.  Hensleigh  Wedgwood  is 
the  most  prominent.^  These  theories  have  no  doubt  been 
incautiously  and  fancifully  worked.  No  wonder  that 
students  who  found  in  nature  real  and  direct  sources  of 
articulate  speech,  in  interjectional  sounds  like  ah  !  ugh ! 
Km!  sJl  f  and  in  imitative  sounds  like /JJirr,  whiz,  tomtom y 
cuckoo,  should  have  thought  that  the  whole  secret  of  lan- 
guage lay  within  their  grasp,  and  that  they  had  only  to  fit 
the  keys  thus  found  into  one  hole  after  another  to  open 
every  lock.  When  a  philosopher  has  a  truth  in  his  hands, 
he  is  apt  to  stretch  it  farther  than  it  will  bear.  The  magic 
umbrella  must  spread  and  spread  till  it  becomes  a  tent  wide 
enough  to  shelter  the  king's  army.  But  it  must  be  borne 
in  mind  that  what  criticism  touches  in  these  opinions  is 
their  exaggeration,  not  their  reality.  That  interjections 
and  imitative  words  are  really  taken  up  to  some  extent,  be 
it  small  or  large,  into  the  very  body  and  structure  of  lan- 
guage, no  one  denies.  Such  a  denial,  if  any  one  offered  it, 
the  advocates  of  the  disputed  theories  might  dispose  of  in 
the  single  phrase,  that  they  would  neither  be  pooh-pooJied 

'  C.  de  Brosses,  'Traitd  de  la  Formation  M^caniqne  des  Langues,'  eto.   (1st 
ed.  1765)  ;  Wedgwood,  'Origin  of  Languiige'  (1866)  ;  '  Die.  of  English  Ktv- 
mology'  (1859,  -^nd  ed.  1872) ;  Farrar,  'Cliapters  ou  Language'  (1865). 
VOL.   I.  »^ 


r^ii 


■i:     ■It 


liU 


1 


-■-— sl-*:'- 


!  "»-i!ni."'»«" ' 


162 


EMOTIONAL     i '  i^    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


'  (fir 


:i:  I 


M  ( 


;i  r; 


nor  hooted  down.  It  may  be  shown  within  the  limits  of  the 
most  strict  and  sober  argument,  that  the  theory  of  the 
origin  of  language  in  natural  and  directly  expressive  sounds 
does  account  for  a  considerable  fraction  of  the  existing 
copia  verborum,  while  it  raises  a  presumption  that,  could 
we  trace  the  history  of  words  more  fully,  it  would  account 
for  far  more. 

In  here  examining  interjectional  and  imitative  sounds 
with  their  derivative  words,  as  well  as  certain  other  parts  of 
language  of  a  more  or  less  cognate  character,  I  purpose  to 
bring  forward  as  far  as  possible  new  evidence  derived  from 
the  languages  of  savage  and  barbarous  races.  By  so  doing 
it  becomes  practicable  to  use  a  check  which  in  great  measure 
stops  the  main  source  of  uncertainty  and  error  in  such 
enquiries,  the  habit  of  etymologizing  words  olf-hand  from 
expressive  sounds,  by  the  unaided  and  often  flighty  fancy  of 
a  philologer.  By  simply  enlarging  the  survey  of  language, 
the  province  of  the  imagination  is  brought  within  narrower 
limits.  If  several  languages,  which  cannot  be  classed  as 
distinctly  of  the  same  family,  unite  in  expressing  some 
notion  by  a  particular  sound  which  may  fairly  claim  to  be 
interjectional  or  imitative,  their  combined  authority  will  go 
far  to  prove  the  claim  a  just  one.  For  if  it  be  objected  that 
Buch  words  may  have  passed  into  the  different  languages 
from  a  common  source,  of  which  the  trace  is  for  the  most 
part  lost,  this  may  be  answered  by  the  question,  Why  is  there 
not  a  proportionate  agreement  between  the  languages  in 
question  throughout  the  far  larger  mass  of  words  which 
cannot  pretend  to  be  direct  sound-words  ?  If  several 
languages  have  independently  chosen  like  words  to  express 
like  meanings,  then  we  may  reasonably  suppose  that  we  are 
not  deluding  ourselves  in  thinking  such  words  highly  appro- 
priate to  their  purpose.  They  are  words  which  answer  the 
conditions  of  original  language,  conforming  as  they  do  to 
the  saying  of  Thomas  Aquinas,  that  the  names  of  things 
ought  to  agree  with  their  natures,  "  nomina  debent  naturis 
rerum  congruere."     Applied  in  such  comparison,  the  lan- 


j^,ii,l 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


163 


in 


irhich 
tveral 


ess 


Ipr 


re  are 
)pro- 

the 
lo  to 
|liings 
ituria 

Ian- 


gurtpces  of  the  lower  races  contribute  evidence  of  excellent 
quality  to  the  problem.  It  will  at  the  same  time  and  by 
the  same  proofs  appear,  that  savages  possess  in  a  high 
degree  the  faculty  of  utt^idng  their  minds  directly  in 
emotional  tones  and  interjections,  of  gouig  straight  to 
nature  to  furnish  themselves  with  imitative  sounds,  includ- 
ing reproductions  of  tlieir  own  direct  emotional  utterances, 
as  means  of  expression  of  ideas,  and  of  introducing  into 
their  formal  language  words  so  produced.  They  have 
clearlj'thus  far  the  means  and  power  of  producing  language. 
In  so  far  as  the  theories  under  consideration  account  for 
the  original  formation  of  language,  they  countenance  the 
view  that  this  formation  took  place  among  mankind  in  a 
savage  state,  and  even,  for  anything  appearing  to  the  con- 
trarv,  in  a  still  lower  stage  of  culture  than  has  survived  to 
our  day.^ 

The  first  step  in  such  investigation  is  to  gain  a  clear  idea 
of  the  various  elements  of  which  spoken  langu:ige  is  made 
up.  These  may  be  enumerated  as  gesture,  expression  oi 
feature,  emotional  tone,  emphasis,  force,  speed,  etc.  of 
uttei'ance,  musical  rhythm  and  intonation,  and  the  forma- 
tion of  the  vowels  and  consonants  which  are  the  skeleton  oi 
articulate  speech. 

In  the  common  intercourse  of  men,  speech  is  habituall}'^ 
accompanied  by  gesture,  the  hands,  head,  and  body  aiding 
and  illustrating  the  spoken  phrase.  So  far  as  we  can  judge, 
the  visible  gesture  and  the  audible  word  have  been  thus 
used  in  combination  since  times  ot  most  remote  antiquity 

'  Among  the  principal  sava,!:;e  and  barbaric  langiiages  here  used  for  evi- 
dence, are  as  follows: — Africa:  Galla  (Tutscliok,  Gr.  and  Die),  Yoruba 
(Bowen,  Gr.  and  Die),  Zulu  (DiJluiu,  Die).  Polynesia,  etc.:  ilaori  (KeudiiU, 
Vocab.,  Williams,  Die  ),  Tonga  (Mariner,  Vocab.),  Fiji  (Hazlew.'od,  Die), 
MebuK'sia  (Gabeletitz,  Molan.  Spr. ).  Australia  (Grey,  Moore,  Schiiruiann, 
Okltield,  Vocabs.)  N.  America:  Pima,  Yakama,  Clallam,  Lummi,  Chinuk, 
Moluiwk,  Jlicmac  (Smitlison.  Coutr.  vol.  iii. ),  Chinook  Jargon  (Giijbs,  Die), 
Quich^  (Rrasseur,  Gr.  and  Die).  S.  America:  Tupi  (Diaz,  Die),  t  aiib 
(Kochefort,  Vocab.),  Quichua  (Markham,  Gr.  and  Die),  Chilian  (Febres, 
Die),  Brazilian  tribes  (.Martius,  '  Glossaria  linguaruni  Brasiliensium ').  Many 
details  in  Pott,  '  Doppelung, "  etc. 

M  2 


H  > 


r:-.«.:<'<.-»'.*w«-«"  II"    ■■i'^*»i.i«l>a»Mirr».«<|ii<«i*i  tetHtlum 


I  '< 


U  i 


■|,   i 


<      '   if 


u 


1G4 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


in  the  history  of  our  race.  It  seems,  however,  that  in  the 
daily  intercourse  of  the  lower  races,  gesture  holds  a  much 
more  important  place  than  we  are  accustomed  to  see  it  fill, 
a  position  even  encroaching  on  that  which  articulate  speech 
holds  among  ourselves.  Mr.  Bonwick  confirms  by  his 
experience  Dr.  Milligan's  account  of  the  Tasmanians  as 
using  "  signs  to  eke  out  the  meaning  of  monosyllabic 
expressions,  and  to  give  force,  precision,  and  character  to 
vocal  sounds."  Captain  Wilson  remarks  on  the  use  of 
gesticulation  in  modifying  words  in  ohe  Chinook  Jargon. 
There  is  confirmation  to  Spix  and  Marti  us'  description 
of  low  Brazilian  tribes  completing  by  signs  the  meaning  of 
their  scanty  sentences,  thus  making  the  words  **  wood-go  " 
serve  to  say  "  I  will  go  into  the  wood,"  by  pointing  the 
mouth  like  a  snout  in  the  direction  meant.  The  Rev. 
J.  L.  Wilson,  describing  the  Grebo  language  of  West 
Africa,  remarks  that  they  have  personal  pronouns,  but 
seldom  use  them  in  conversation,  leaving  it  to  gesture  to 
determine  whether  a  verb  is  to  be  taken  in  the  first  or 
second  person  ;  thus  the  words  "  ni  ne  "  will  mean  "  I  do 
it,"  or  "you  do  it,"  according  to  the  significant  gestures  of 
the  speaker.^  Beside  such  instances,  it  will  hereafter  be 
noticed  tliat  the  lower  races,  in  counting,  habitually  use 
gesture-language  for  a  purpose  to  which  higher  races  apply 
word-langU!ige.  To  this  prominent  condition  of  gesture  as 
a  means  of  expression  among  rude  tribes,  and  to  the 
development  of  pantomime  in  public  show  and  private 
intercourse  among  such  peoples  as  the  Neapolitans  of  our 
own  day,  the  most  extreme  contrast  may  be  found  in  Eng- 
land, where,  whether  for  good  or  ill,  suggestive  pantomime  is 
now  reduced  to  so  small  a  compass  in  social  talk,  and  even 
in  public  oratory. 

Changes  of  the  bodily  attitude,  corresponding  in  their 
fine  gradations  with  changes  of  the  feelings,  comprise  condi- 

'  Bonwick,  'Daily  Life  of  Tasiuanians,'  p.  140;  Capt.  Wilson,  in  *Tr. 
Eth.  Soc.'vol.  iv.  p.  322,  etc.  ;  J.  L.  Wilson,  in  'Journ.  Amer.  Oriental 
Soc.,'  vol.  i.  184!),  No.  4  ;  also  Cranz.,  'Gronland,'  p.  279  (oit  '  ^elow,  p. 
186).     For  other  accounts,  see  '  Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,'  p.  77 


m 


I,  ?  ; 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


1G5 


do 

5  of 

be 
use 

as 
Ithe 
.'ate 
our 
ng- 
|e  is 
Iven 


leir 
idi- 

'Tr. 
knta) 


tions  of  the  suii,,oe  of  the  body,  postures  of  the  limbs,  and 
also    especially  those  expressive  attitudes  of  the  i^ice   to 
which  oiir  attention  is  particularly  directed  when  we  notice 
one  another.     The  visible  expression  of  the  features  is  a 
symptom  which  displays  the  speaker's  state  of  mind,  his 
feelings  of  pleasure  or  disfust,  of  pride  or  humility,  of  faith 
or  doubt,  and  so  forth.     Not  that  there   is  between  the 
emotion  and  its  bodily  expression  any  originally  intentioniil 
connexion.       It   is   merelj'   that  a   certain    action  of  oui 
physical  machinery  sliows  symptoms  which  we  have  learnt 
by  experience  to  refer  to  a  mental  cause,  as  we  judge  by 
seeing  a  man  sweat  or  limp  that  he  is  hot  or  footsore. 
Blushing  is  caused  by  certain  emotions,  and  among  Euro- 
peans it  is  a  visible  expression  or  symptom   of  them  ;  not 
so  among    South   American    Indians,    whose    blushes,    as 
Mr.  David  Forbes  points  out,  may  be  detected  by  the  hand 
or  a  thermometer,  but  being   concealed   by  the   dark   skin 
cannot  S'U've  as  a  visible  sign  of  feeling. '     By  turning  these 
natural  processes  to  account,  men    contrive    to   a    certain 
extent  to  put  on  particular  physical  expressions,  frowning 
or  smiling  for  instance,  in  order  to  simulate  the  emotions 
which  would  naturally  produce  such  expressions,  or  merely 
to  convey  the  thought  of  such  emotions  to  others.     Now  it 
is  well   known  to  every   one  that  physical  expression   by 
feature,  etc.,  forming  a  part  of  the  universal  gesture-lan- 
guage,   thus   serves   as   an   important   adjunct   to    spoken 
language.     It  is  not  so  obvious,  but  on  examination  will 
prove  to  be  true,  that  such  expression  by  feature  itself  acts 
as  a  formative   power  in  vocal  language.     li^xpression   of 
countenance   has  an   action   beyond  that  of  mere  vi,  ible 
gesture.     The  bodily  attitude  brought  on  by  a  particular 
state  of  mind  affects  the  position  of  the  organs  of  speech, 
both  the  internal  larynx,    etc.,  and  the  external   features 
whose  change  can  be  watched  by  the  mere  looker-on.    Even 
though  the  expression  of  the  speaker's  face  may  not  be  seen 
by  the  hearer,  the  effect  of  the  whole  bodily  attitude  of 

Forbes,  '  Ayraara  Imlian.s,'  in  Jourii.  Eth.  Soc.  1870,  voL  ii.  p.  208. 


!'! 


■^■■aiiiiiMtjjiiiiiiMi  aiiiiiiii  rjrgg:;..^^ 


m 


(n 


U  :■ 


i  '*•■  I 


166 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


whi(;h  it  forms  part  is  not  thereby  done  away  with.  For  on 
the  position  thus  taken  by  the  various  organs  ooncernetl  in 
speech,  depends  what  I  have  here  called  "  emotional  tone," 
whereby  the  voice  carries  direct  expression  of  the  speaker's 
fe 


cnnfjj. 


The  ascertaining  of  the  precise  physical  mode  in  which 
certain  attitudes  of  the  internal  and  external  face  come  to 
correspond  to  certain  moods  of  mind,  is  a  pliysiological 
problem  as  j^et  little  understood;  but  the  fact  that  particular 
expressions  of  face  are  accompanied  by  corresj)onding  and 
dependent  expressions  of  emotional  tone,  only  requires  an 
observer  or  a  looking-glass  to  prove  it.  The  laugh  made  with 
a  s.lemn,  contemptuous,  or  sarcastic  face,  is  quite  diflerent 
from  that  which  comes  from  a  jo3'ous  one;  the  ah!  oh!  ho! 
hey  !  and  so  on,  change  their  modulations  to  match  tlie  expres- 
sion of  coimtenance.  The  effect  of  the  emotional  tone  does 
not  even  require  fitness  in  the  meaning  of  the  spoken  words, 
for  nonsense  or  an  unknown  tongue  may  be  made  to  convey, 
when  spoken  with  expressive  intonation,  the  feelings  which 
are  displayed  upon  the  speaker's  face.  This  expression 
may  even  be  recognized  in  the  dark  by  noticing  the  tone  it 
gives  forth,  while  the  forced  character  given  by  the  attempt 
to  bring  cut  a  sound  not  matching  even  the  outward  plaj' 
of  the  features  can  hardly  be  hidden  by  the  most  expert 
ventriloquist,  and  in  such  forcing,  the  sound  perceptibly 
drags  the  face  into  the  attitude  that  fits  with  it.  The 
nature  of  communication  by  emotional  tone  seems  to  me  to 
be  s(.mewhat  on  this  wise.  It  does  not  appear  that 
particular  tones  at  all  belong  directly  and  of  themselves  to 
particular  emotions,  but  that  their  action  depends  on  the 
vocal  organs  of  the  speaker  and  hearer.  Other  animals, 
having  vocal  organs  different  from  man's,  have  accordingly, 
as  we  know,  a  different  code  of  emotional  tones.  An 
alteration  in  man's  vocal  organs  would  bring  a  correspond- 
ing alteration  in  the  effect  of  tone  in  expressing  feeling ; 

»  Compare  Herbert  Spencer,  'Origin  and  Function  of  Muaic '  in  'Easays' 
(i8u8). 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUJ>1E. 


167 


kays 


the  tone  which  to  us  expresses  surprise  or  anger  might 
come  to  express  pleasure,  and  so  forth.  As  it  is,  chiklren 
learn  by  early  experience  that  such  and  such  a  tone  indicates 
such  and  such  an  emotion,  and  this  the}'  make  out  partly 
b}'  finding  themselves  uttering  such  tones  when  their  feel- 
ings have  brought  their  faces  to  the  appropriate  attitudes, 
and  partly  by  observing  the  expression  of  voice  in  others. 
At  three  or  four  years  old  they  are  to  be  seen  in  the  act  of 
acquiring  this  knowledge,  turning  round  to  look  at  the 
speaker's  face  and  gesture  to  make  sure  of  the  meaning  of 
the  tone.  But  in  later  3'ears  this  knowledge  becomes  so 
familiar  that  it  is  supposed  to  have  been  intuitive.  Then, 
when  men  talk  together,  the  hearer  receives  from  each 
emotional  tone  an  indication,  a  signal,  of  the  speaker's 
attitude  of  bod}^,  and  through  this  of  his  state  of  mind, 
These  he  can  recognize,  and  even  reproduce  in  ]>imself,  as 
the  operator  at  one  end  of  a  telegraphic  wire  can  follow,  oy 
noticing  his  needles,  the  action  of  .his  coUeagui;  at  the 
other.  In  watching  the  process  which  thus  enables  one 
man  to  take  a  coi^y  of  another's  emotions  through  their 
physical  effects  on  his  vocal  tone,  we  may  admire  the  perfec- 
tion with  which  a  means  so  simple  answers  an  end  so  com- 
plex, and  apparently  so  remote. 

By  eliminating  from  speech  all  effects  of  gesture,  of 
expression  of  face,  and  of  emotional  tone,  we  go  far  toward 
reducing  it  to  that  system  of  conventional  articulate  sounds 
which  the  grammarian  and  the  comparative  philologist 
habitually  consider  as  language.  These  articulate  sounds 
are  capable  of  being  roughly  set  down  in  signs  standing  for 
vowels  and  consonants,  with  the  aid  of  acc^ents  and  other 
significant  marks ;  and  they  may  then  again  be  read  aloud 
fr(nu  these  written  signs,  by  any  one  who  has  learnt  to  give 
its  proper  sound  to  each  letter. 

What  vowels  are,  is  a  matter  which  has  been  for  some 
years  well  understood.^     They  are  compoimd  musical  tones 

*  See  Helniholt?  'Toiiciniifiinhmj,'on,'  2nd  ed.  p.  1G3  ;  Tyndall,  'Sound,' 
lecture  v.  ;  Max  Miillcr,  '  Lecturi'Sj'  2nd  scries,  p.  95,  eto. 


.^'/rsc 


n 


108 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


i  ;  / 


1: 

n  I 


V^ 


<  :       i 


Vi 


:«i 


^^f 


l!   ill 


(h 


such  as,  in  the  vox  hiimana  stop  of  the  organ,  are  sounded 
by  reeds   (vibrating  tongues)  fitted  to   organ-pipes   of  par- 
ticular construction.     The  manner  of  formation  of  vowels 
by  the  voice  is  shortly  this.      There  are  situated  in  the 
larynx  a  pair  of  vibrating  membranes  called  the  vocal  chords, 
which  may  be  rudely  imitated  by  stretching  a  piece  of  sheet 
india-rubber  over  the  open  end  of  a  tube,  so  as  to  form  two 
half-covers  to  it,  *'  like  the  parchment  of  a  drum  split  across 
the  middle  ;  "  wlien  the  tube  is  blown  through,  the  india- 
rubber  flaps  will  vibrate  as  the  vocal  chords  do  in  the  larynx, 
and  give  out  a   sound.     In  the  human  voice,   the   musical 
effect  of  the  vibrating  chords  is  increased  by  the   cavitj'  of 
the  mouth,  which  acts  as  a  resonator  or  sounding-box,  and 
which   also,    by  its    shape    at    any  moment,  modifies   the 
musical  "  quality  "  of  the  sound  produced.      Quality,  which 
is  independent  of  pitch,  depends  on  the  harmonic  overtones 
accompanying  the   fundamental  tone   which  alone  musical 
notation  takes  account  of:  this  quality  makes  the  dift'erence 
between  tbe  same  note  on  two  instiuments,  flute  and  piano 
for  instance,  while  some  instruments,  as  the  violin,  can  give 
to  one  note   a  wide  variation   of  quality.     To   such  quality 
the  formation  of  vowels  is  due.     This  is  perfectly  shown  by 
the  common  Jew's  harp,  which  when  struck  can  be  made 
to  utter  the  vowels  a,  e,  i,  o,  u,  &c.,  by  simply  putting  the 
mouth  in  the  proper  position  for  speaking  these  vowels.     In 
tliis  experiment  tlie  player's  voice  emits  no  sound,  but  the 
vibrating  tongue  of  the  Jew's  harp  placed  in  front  of  oue 
mouth  acts   as  a  substitute  for  the  vocal  chords,  and  the 
vowel-sounds  are  produced  by  the  various  positions  of  the 
cavity  of  the  mouth  modifying  the  quality  of  the  note,  by 
bringing  out  with  difl'erent  degrees  of  strength  the  series  of 
harmonic  tones  of  which  it  is  composed.     As  to  musical 
theory,  emotional  tone   and  vowel-tone  are  connected.     In 
fact,  an  emotional  tone  may  be  defined  as  a  vowel,  whose 
particular  musical  quality  is  that  produced  by  the  huuian 
vocal    organs,    when    adjusted    to    a    particular     state    of 
feeling. 


■""king  it  alter  the  dictio    !■  '*"*""""'  ''"°"  "«'l'i"K  of 

"■'■-^  rises  and  fo,],  of  1„7?'"">' '"  South-East  Asia, 
»h'cl.  serve  „s  in  conve,™!  "1  °  •  °""  "'"'"'  '"^  "»«« 
*■'■.,  actuall,-  give  dilje,,:  t  '^        "'  I"''''''""  "■»!  '"iswer 

A«=to  s™l'-   ,-  ®'"">*'8ni'ifation.     Thus  in  Si 

to  seeli,  /io=i)estiIence  7„1_(;  „,,  o'amese, 

t'j«  da(.„rate  svst  ™  o    tol  !       ';''  '"'"^'^1»™^e  o 

of  ««  acunudation  of  ex      r"      "-"""^  «'^  "«-»-'y 
;;'»-  of  the  oratorical  or  •:!™."!"'f^''-:   *"  -.!-i>Iy   the 
t'-s  given  over  to  the  di.I        j  '     ■""""\""n.  -i.i.h  b..ing 
Another  consequence  is     h       , ''         °''  *"''  "'«  g'-»"""ar! 
--i«  becomes   ra.iical  /  dm  '  ,  Jt'"  °' ^«"'"S  I'-try  to 
S»™ese  song  to  a  Euro,  enT  ""'•'''■    ">   ™S  a 

syllables  alter  accordi  !'  ^  .l'"  ."'"'^-Vl"  "^"""'«  "^  "- 
turns  their  sense  into" tl^  ^  ,,  r""'""  '"  ""^■''' -'' 
Afr'-'.  again,  the  san.e  deWce  "'T''''     ^^    ^^est 

-=stich,  .,  =  ,,o,,e,  .,,=;;:,    rr  =  ,^''-  »  Cahonuu. 
^'"'f    for  practical    pu   a         't,       f"'  '^  =  'vith,  ,«  = 
hardly  to  be  commended  buH         "  '"'«"''"'«   "'"sic  is 
-  ^bowing  that  man  des  nit        ■■','?"•'''' "  '"'--''4 
--"-■ited  scheme  of  ZZ^?'^'' '""°^ '^■'  "'^"'^i 
'■■".vstlie  resources  of  sou,  dZ'     ''''""'''  «"'  '"  va.ious 
^  The  theory  of  consonam     ^.n  "T'  "^  ^-P'^^-sion. 

;";»-:'-  They  a.,  n"  ,  si  :rvib"7  "''"•"'  *''->  "-t 

>>>'t  n„:ses   acco,npan,.ing     C'  "J;™''""^  "^  ™wels  are. 
no.ses  as  the  rushing  of  the  "     ^  /  ""'sician   such 

-■•"Wng  of  the  vio,i,t:L      ,      1!"'"  f^"'-*''""-"*^'  «- 
troublesome  as  inte.fering      t        "f  ''"'^'  "'-^  »"»Piy 

'  See  P;  Ilpffoix    '  p 
Akad.-,i„„e6   isfl?  ''''",'""'•   Li»g,   Tliai.  ; '  B„sH.,r,    ,•      .,. 


ii 


i!! 


:? 


-Jfif^^JTi^ 


170 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE     LANGUAGE. 


i-.l 


consonants,  in  combination  with  the  musical  vowels.  As  ta 
the  positions  and  movements  of  the  vocal  orphans  in  produc- 
ing consonants,  an  excellent  account  with  anatomical 
diagrams  is  given  in  Professor  Max  Miiller's  second  series 
of  Lectures.  For  the  present  purpose  of  passing  in  review 
the  various  devices  by  Avliich  the  language-maker  has  con- 
trived to  make  sound  a  means  of  expressing  thouglit,  perhaps 
no  better  illus^tration  of  their  nature  can  be  mentioned  than 
Sir  Charles  Wheatstone's  account  of  his  speaking  machine;^ 
for  one  of  the  best  ways  of  studj-ing  difticult  phenomena  is 
to  see  them  artificially  imitated.  The  instrument  in  ques- 
tion pronounced  T-atin,  French,  and  Italian  words  well :  it 
could  say,  "  Je  vous  aime  de  tout  mon  coeur,"  *'  Leopoldus 
Secundus  Roman  orum  Tniperator,"  and  so  fortli,  but  it  was 
not  so  successful  with  German.  As  to  the  vowels,  they 
were  of  course  simply  sounded  by  suitable  reeds  and  pipes. 
To  uifect  them  with  consonants,  contrivances  were  arranged 
to  act  like  the  liuman  organs.  Thus  j^  "^^'^s  made  by 
suddenly  removing  the  o^^erator's  hand  from  the  mouth  of 
the  iigure,  and  b  in  the  same  way,  except  tliat  the  mouth 
was  not  quite  covered,  while  an  outlet  like  the  nostrils 
was  used  in  forming  ;/i ;  /and  v  were  rendered  by  modifying 
the  shape  of  the  mouth  by  a  hand  ;  air  was  made  to  rush 
through  small  tubes  to  produce  the  sibilants  s  and  sJi ;  and 
the  liquids  r  and  I  were  souiulod  by  the  action  of  tremulous 
reeds.  As  "Wheatstone  remarks,  the  most  important  use  of 
such  ingenious  mechanical  imitations  of  speech  may  be  to 
fix  and  preserve  an  accurate  register  of  the  pronunciation  of 
different  languages.  A  perfectly  arranged  speaking  machine 
would  in  fait  represent  for  us  that  framework  of  language 
which  'consists  of  mere  vowels  and  consonants,  though 
^\ithout  most  of  those  expressive  adjuncts  which  go  to  make 
up  the  conversation  of  speaking  men. 

Of  vowels  and  consonants  capable  of  being  employed  in 
language,    man   is   able   to   pronounce   and  distinguish   an 


•  C.  W     in  '  Loudou  and  Westminster  Review,'  Oct.  1837. 


i 


enormous  variety      R  *  +i.- 

>s  nowhere  brought  .To  nse  !hT T"^  "^  ""^^'"^  ^""'"i^ 
dialect  of  the  worid  is  but  ^  f  "r    ^''^''  '""""""ge  or 
««-ie3   of  definite  voweTL  d  "^         "  '"  ''^""  »  ''""t^d 
to  erable  exactness  to  ea  h  and  "r°T'''    ^''"^"^    ''"i 
O""  its  phonetic  alphabet      N  '^^^''°o»i'>g  "hat  we  may 
ences  as  occur  in  the  speech  of  S    ',""','"'''  """'"  '"*■- 
"■ties,  each  dialect  of  the  worid         f '"''  "'  ^"''"  "ommu- 
I'l'onetic  system,  and  tl  esT,  h      I  ^'  '"''  '»  '"'™  ''^  o™ 
Our  vowels,  for /nstaLe  cMefr  r/^"'""^  "''^  -'^'v. 
and  Dutch.     French  Cw  t^""^  f°™  "^°^«  "f  French 
which  we  write  as  th  in  ill    '^f;       '"'""  "'  ""^  ^°"«'^ 
J-Ped  c,  the  so-called  L'oislJ'l-  "''"^  ""^  Castilian 
Tf'  "g"^  -nake  shift  to' write  irfi ° ^r""""'  "'""''  '^^ 
distmct  in  sound  from  both  our  '  f^^"'  ''  '^  1«i'o 

th-g  for  us  to  find  foreign  la:";""'  ^'  "  ""''^  "  -""1 
"ear  m  sound  to  son.e  of  ours  S  "'"*'"»"  '^'""-^  --en 
famihar  to  ourselves.  Amo!«\  ^  Possessing  others  un- 
d-fficulty  in  pronounchtTand  th""'  "''^  ""^  «'»"-« 
Australian  dialects.     When  fo.  •  """"  °^  «  »»<•  /  in 

Mohawts,  who  have  no  ^.t^Tt?  ^''T'  *"  '-"-^  "^e 
"ounce  words  with  p  and  b  intern  tr"  '"'^""'»"^'  *°  P"" 
was  00  ndiculous  to  expect  people  Lt^''''"'''^*^''  """  it 
speak;  and  the  Portuguese  Zln  '^"'  *'"'''"  ""uths  to 

tl-at  the  natives  had  '  ether 71""'' "^ ^™^''' '■^""•■'"ng 
neatly  described  them  as  a  p  ople  IT  ^  "„"'•''■  '^"g-g« 
•■^.'/,  nether  faith,  law,  norW     n  f  "'''''^'■■^^'  fe^.  nor 
sounds  only  used  by  some  mlL,      "'*^'  ^""P™.  too,  that 
nnwritten  and  unwriteable    s]  all  h'"/"'^''J^°"'""J  "oises, 
others  in  their  articulate  In'nZt     V"™T'.  '"  "^'""""t  by 
occurs  with  the  noises  calW    Cickf""«T  °' ""^ '''"'« 
feniiliar  to  us  as  interjections  •  ,1,      .Z       ^'"=''  rounds  are 
»'  the  cheek  (a.d  us'ulj  y ft  e"lT, '"'?'  ""«''  ■»«''« 
used  n,   driving  horses,  whil  1.   ,    "''"f  ^ '^ '^""'inually 

palatal  click  madewithhr™™'  "'  *^'  ^'"'"^  a^d 
roof  of  the  mouth,  are  com  «     f:":!'""^'  «■«  '^^'h  and  the 

of  surprise,  reproof.  „r  ...^ZZ^'  tC T  "  ^ ^^'™™ 

-liius,  too,  the  natives 


■  k  ■:  I 

I  It  ■ 


Il  I 


■ 


f! 


I 


172 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


of  Tierra  del  Fuego  express  "  no  '*  by  a  peculiar  cluck,  as 
do  also  the  Turks,  who  accompany  it  with  the  gesture  oi 
throwing  back  the  head ;  and  it  appears  from  the  accounts 
of  travellers  that  llie  clicks  of  surprise  and  admiration 
among  the  natives  of  Australia  are  much  like  those  we  hear 
at  home.  But  though  here  these  clicking  noises  are  only 
used  interjection  ally,  it  is  well  known  that  South  African 
races  have  taken  such  sounds  up  into  their  articulate  speech 
and  have  made,  as  we  may  say,  letters  of  them.  The  very 
name  of  Kottentots,  applied  to  the  Namaquas  and  other 
kindred  tribes,  appears  to  be  not  a  native  name  (as  Peter 
Kolb  thought)  but  a  rude  imitative  word  coined  by  the 
Dutch  to  express  the  clicking  "  hot  en  tot,^'  and  the  term 
Hottenfotism  has  been  thence  adopted  as  a  medical  descrip- 
tion of  one  of  the  varieties  of  stammering.  North-West 
America  is  another  district  of  the  world  distinguished  for  the 
production  of  strange  clucking,  gurgling,  and  grunting 
letters,  difficult  or  impossible  to  European  voices.  More- 
over, there  are  man}'  sounds  capable  of  being  used  in 
articulate  speech,  varieties  of  chirping,  whistling,  blowing, 
and  sucking  noises,  of  which  some  are  familiar  to  our  own 
use  as  ciills  to  animals,  or  interjectional  noises  of  contempt 
or  surprise,  but  which  no  tribe  is  known  to  have  brought 
into  their  alphabet.  With  all  the  vast  phonetic  variety  of 
known  languages,  the  limits  of  possible  utterance  are  far 
from  being  reached. 

Up  to  a  certain  point  we  can  understand  the  reasons 
•which  havf;  guided  the  various  tribes  of  mankind  in  the 
selection  of  their  various  alphabets  ;  ease  of  utterance  to  the 
speaker,  combined  with  distinctness  of  effect  to  the  hearer, 
have  been  undoubtedly  among  the  princijial  of  the  selecting 
causes.  We  may  fairly  connect  with  the  close  uniformity  of 
men's  organs  of  speech  all  over  the  world,  the  general 
similai'ity  which  prevails  in  the  phonetic  systems  of  tho 
most  different  languages,  and  which  gives  us  the  power  of 
roughly  writing  down  so  large  a  proportion  of  anyone  language 
by  means  of  an  alphabet  intended  lor  any  other.     But  while 


(3 


:-'if 


1 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


17a 


the 
the 
[er, 

of 
Iral 
the 


f 


o 


lise 


we  thus  account  by  physical  similarity  for  the  existence  of  a 
kind  of  natural  alphabet  common  to  mankind,  we  must  look 
to  other  causes  to  determine  the  selection  of  sounds  used  in 
different  languages,  and  to  account  for  those  remarkable 
courses  of  cliange  which  go  on  in  languages  of  a  common 
stock,  producing  in  Europe  such  variations  of  one  original 
word  as  f<iter,  father,  vater,  or  in  the  islands  of  Polynesia 
offering  us  the  numeral  5  under  the  strangely- varied  forms 
of  lima,  rima,  dima,  n'lma,  and  liima.  Changes  of  this  sort 
have  acted  so  widely  and  regularly,  that  since  the  enuncia- 
tion of  Grimm's  law  their  stud}'  has  become  a  main  part  of 
philology.  Though  their  causes  {.re  as  yet  so  obscure,  we 
may  at  least  argue  that  such  wide  and  definite  operations 
cannot  be  due  to  chance  or  arbitrar}'  fancy,  \ut  must  be  tlie 
result  of  laws  as  wide  and  definite  as  themselves. 

Let  lis  now  suppose  a  book  to  be  written  with  a  tolerably 
correct  alphabet,  for  instance,  an  ordinary  Italian  book,  or 
an  English  one  in  some  good  system  of  phonetic  letter?. 
To  suppose  English  written  in  the  makeshift  alphabet  wliich 
we  still  keep  in  use,  would  be  of  course  to  complicate  the 
matter  in  hand  with  a  new  and  needless  difficult}'.  If,  then, 
the  book  be  written  in  a  sufficient  alphabet,  and  handed  to 
a  reader,  his  office  will  by  no  means  stop  short  at  rendering 
back  into  articulate  sounds  the  vowels  and  consonants  before 
him,  as  though  he  were  reading  over  proofs  for  the  press. 
For  the  emotional  tone  just  spoken  of  has  dropped  out  in 
writing  down  the  words  in  letters,  and  it  will  be  the  reader's 
duty  to  guess  from  the  meaning  of  the  words  what  this  tone 
should  be,  and  to  put  it  in  again  accordingly.  He  has  more- 
over to  introduce  emphasis,  whether  by  accent  or  stress,  on 
certain  syllables  or  words,  thereby  altering  their  effect  in 
the  sentence ;  if  he  says,  for  example,  "  I  never  sold  you 
that  horse,"  an  emphasis  on  any  one  of  these  six  words  will 
alter  the  import  of  the  whole  phrase.  Now,  in  emphatic 
pronunciation  two  distinct  processes  are  to  be  remarked. 
The  effect  produced  by  changes  in  loudness  and  duration  of 
words  is  directly  imitative ;  it  is  a  mere  gesture  made  with 


'  *^^^iCJg^ig...'.7'3'!^fJ  i'ldl^  .<n<l»Bir^?!P?5^ 


174. 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGL'. 


the  voice,  as  we  may  notice  by  the  way  in  which  any  one 
will  speak  of  "  a  sliort  sharp  answer,"  **  a  long  iceary  year," 
"a  loud  hurst  of  music,"  "  a  gentle  gliding  motion,"  as  com- 
pared with  the  like  mr.riner  in  which  the  gesture-language 
would  adapt  its  force  aihl  jpeed  to  the  kind  of  action  to  be 
represented.  Written  language  can  hardly  convey  but  by  the 
context  the  striking  effects  which  our  imitative  faculty  adds 
to  spoken  language,  in  our  continual  endeavour  to  make  the 
sound  of  each  word  we  speak  a  sort  of  echo  to  its  sense. 
We  see  this  in  the  difference  between  writing  and  telling  the 
little  story  of  the  man  who  was  worried  by  being  talked  to 
about  "  good  books."  **  Do  you  mean,"  he  asked,  speaking 
shortl}'  with  a  face  of  strong  firm  approval,  "good  books?  '* 
"  or,"  with  a  drawl  and  a  fatuous-benevolent  simper,  "  goo-d 
books  ?  "  Musical  accent  (acccntus,^  musical  tone)  is  turned  to 
account  as  a  means  of  emphasis,  as  when  we  give  prominence 
to  a  particular  syllable  or  word  in  a  sentence  by  raising  or 
depressing  it  a  semi-tone  or  more.  The  reader  has  to 
divide  his  sentences  with  pauses,  being  guided  in  this  to 
some  extent  by  stops ;  the  rhythmic  measure  in  which  he 
will  utter  prose  as  well  as  poetry  is  not  without  its  effect ; 
and  he  has  again  to  introduce  music  by  speaking  each 
sentence  to  a  kind  of  imperfect  melody.  Professor  Helm- 
lioltz  endeavours  to  write  down  in  musical  notes  how  a 
German  with  a  bass  voice,  speaking  on  B  flat,  might  say, 
*'Ich  bin  spatzieren  gegangen.— Bist  du  spatzieren  gegang- 
en?"  falling  a  fourth  (to  F)  at  the  end  of  the  affirmative 
sentence,  and  rising  a  fifth  (to  f)  in  asking  the  question, 
thus  ranging  through  an  octave.^  When  an  English  speaker 
tries  to  illustrate  in  his  own  language  the  rising  and  falling 
tones  of  Siamese  vowels,  he  compares  them  with  the  English 
tones  of  question  and  answer,  as  in  "  Will  you  go  ?  Yes."' 
The  rules  of  this  imperfect  musical  intonation  in  ordinary 
conversation  have  been  as  yet  but  lictle  studied.     But  as  a 


■  hii 


:(•■••-- , 


'  '  Acceiitus  est  etiam  in  dicendo  cantus  obscurior. ' — Cic.  de  Orat. 

3  Helmholtz,  p.  364 

'  Caswell,  in  liastian,  'Berlin.  Akad.'  L  0. 


™-o.^  ^.  aux«,v.  ^,,„,„^_ 


means  of  givbg  3„, 

been  mora  fuUy  „,,,,;^,'  '^  «°^  Pathos  to  I,.„g„„^„,_  ;, ,, 

«act  rules  of  „>eIod,,  1  >d  ™/,r«\  ^^'^'^'na&ed   under 

^eclesiastical  intoning  'j,,.   ,    """'  '"'""  «"  the  one  hand 

-  «ft«>  to  be  hoard fnreW our'""''""""""  '>'"f-  -  n« 

";  -nciont  an,I   mode™    tW,     T'""''  """  °-  "'«  oS 

spoken  prose,  with  the  musical  2  r,     /'"'"  ''"'"■™'  from 
^^*  kept,  and  so  obscur  d  bt  con      "'  '''  "■"'^'^  «"  care 

^;^        much  as  possible  supn  t;";'  ?''  ""*  ™nxo„a„ts 

leC  ^''''  *^^  --^^  -v:t:t^  :■:-«.  ^ot 
-»~r:rhr^^^^^^^^    -  vocabmar.  „; 

--,  of  ..the  brut'h ^^::tre\^'^™^<'-«- S^  c^^ 

^ut    the   epithets   are  in    thpL  "^'^'^  °^  ^^"^gua^e 

cul  t/Tf  ""''"^'^  "P  into  tke^Z   .    '"  "^''""  ^'«'e 
cultivated  human  langua.re      ,"'.°"f  t  of  the  most  hi-hlv 

■.nart,culate,"sofaratWthatT,       "  """'  «""  "'y'tl 
an<I  vowels  recognised  I^   1 '  l''^*:  ^^'^'^"'^  °f  "onsonan L 
hope  essl^,  „.,„  ,,^^       ^J  CT   T'  '"""'  down  more 
•nteriections.    Alphabet  writi^t^i:?"""  *°  »"««   Tw^ 
olumsy  an  instrument  to  re,  d'     f  '°°  ""ompfete  a^d 

■novated  sounds,  for  wh  "ha  f' ''""''"'''''""' ^^'™«""y 
words  do  duty  poorly  enot      i   ""'  ^'^"''""""y-wrtoen 
tunes  even  in  the  tall  of  it  ^.^T''"^  "'^"'''  ""d  «ome! 
books  than  from  the  livi„„  w^m  "''"  '"''"  '«<>">'  ratlier  Cm 
"».tat.„ns,  ane^j  *«,.  /  ^  /  7^  r^^^"  "^^  awkC^ 

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176 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


the  unquestioned  authority  of  words  printed  in  a  book,  and 
reproduced  letter  for  letter  with  a  most  amusing  accuracy. 
But  when  Home  Tooke  fastens  upon  an  unfortunate  Italian 
grammarian  and  describes  him  as  **  The  industrious  and 
exact  Cinonio,  who  does  not  appear  ever  to  have  had  a 
single  glimpse  of  reason,"  it  is  not  easy  to  see  what  the 
pioneer  of  English  philology  could  find  to  object  to  in 
Cinonio's  obviously  true  assertion,  that  a  single  interjection, 
ah  /  or  ahi !  is  capable  of  expressing  more  than  twenty 
different  emotions  or  intentions,  such  as  pain,  entreaty, 
threatening,  sighing,  disdain,  according  to  the  tone  in  which 
it  is  uttered.^  The  fact  that  interjections  do  thus  utter 
feelings  is  quite  beyond  dispute,  and  the  philologist's 
concern  with  them  is  on  the  one  hand  to  study  their  action 
in  expressing  emotion,  and  on  the  other  to  trace  their 
passage  into  more  fully-formed  words,  such  as  have  their 
place  in  connected  syntax  and  form  part  of  logical  proposi- 
tions. 

In  the  first  place,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  separate 
from  proper  interjections  the  many  sense- words  which,  often 
kept  up  in  a  mutilated  or  old-fashioned  guise,  come  so  close 
to  them  both  in  appearance  and  in  use.  Among  classic 
examples  are  <^f  pt,  SeCre,  age  I  made  !  Such  a  word  is  hail ! 
which,  as  the  Gothic  Bible  shows,  was  originally  an  adjec- 
tive, "  whole,  hale,  prosperous,"  used  vocatively,  just  as  the 
Italians  cry  hravo !  hrava.'  hravi !  brave/  When  the 
African  negro  cries  out  in  fear  or  wonder  ?«tt///a  .'  indmd!^ 
he  might  be  thought  to  be  uttering  a  real  interjection,  "  a 
word  used  to  express  some  passion  or  emotion  of  the  mind," 
as  Lindley  Murray  has  it,  but  in  fact  he  is  simply  calling, 
grown-up  baby  as  he  is,  for  his  mother ;  and  the  very  same 


*  Home  Tooke,  '  Diversions  of  Parley,'  2nd  ed.  London,  1798,  pt.  i.  pp. 
60-8. 

2  R.  F.  Burton,  *  Lake  Kegioiis  of  Central  Africa,'  vol.  ii.  p.  333  ;  Livings 
Btone,  '  Missionary  Tr.  in  S.  Africa,'  p,  298  ;  *Gv.  of  Mpongwe  lang,'  (A  B  C. 
F.  Missions,  Kev.  J.  L.  Wilson),  p.  27.  See  Callaway,  'Zulu  Tales,"  vol.  i. 
p.  59. 


e:\iotional  and  imitative  language. 


177 


3C- 

the 
llie 

'  a 

> 

le 


IPP- 


Lng- 


tliing  has  been  noticed  among  Indians  of  Upper  California^ 
who  as  an  expression  of  pain  cry,  and!  that  is  "mother."^ 
Other  exclamations  consist  of  a  pure  interjection  combined 
with  a  pronoun,  as  otfioL !  oime  !  ah  me  !  or  with  an  adjective, 
as  alas  !  hdas  !  (ah  weary  !)  With  what  care  interjections 
should  be  sifted,  to  avoid  the  risk  of  treating  as  original 
elementary  sounds  of  language  what  are  reall}'  nothing  but 
sense- words,  we  maj'  judge  from  the  way  in  which  the 
connnon  English  exclauiation  well !  icell !  approaches  the 
geniiine  interjectional  sound  in  the  Coptic  expression  "to 
make  ouclouele,^*  which  signifies  to  wail,  Latin  ululare. 
Still  better,  we  may  find  a  learned  traveller  in  the  last 
century  quite  seriously  remarking,  apropos  of  the  old  Greek 
battle-shout,  akaXd !  aXaXd !  that  the  Turks  to  this  day 
call  out  Allah  !  Allah  !  Allah  I  upon  the  like  occasion.^ 

The  calls  to  animals  customary  in  different  countries' 
are  to  a  great  extent  interjectional  in  their  use,  but  to 
attempt  to  explain  them  as  a  whole  is  to  step  upon  as 
slippery  ground  as  lies  within  the  range  of  philology. 
Sometimes  they  may  be  in  fact  pure  interjections,  like  the 
schu  schu  !  mentioned  as  an  old  German  cry  to  scare  birds, 
as  we  should  say  sh  sh  f  or  the  ad  '  with  which  the  Indians 
of  Brazil  call  their  dogs.  Or  the}'  may  be  set  down  as  sim})le 
imitations  of  the  aninuxl's  own  cries,  as  the  clucking  to  call 
fowls  in  our  own  farm-3'ards,  or  the  Austrian  calls  of  pi  pi  / 
or  tiet  tiet  f  to  chickens,  or  the  Swabian  kaiiter  kaitt  /  to 
turkeys,  or  the  shepherd's  baaing  to  call  sheep  in  India. 
In  other  cases,  however,  they  may  be  sense-words  more  or 
less  broken  down,  as  when  the  creature  is  spoken  to  b}^  a 
sound  which  seems  merely  taken  from  its  own  common 
oame.     If  an  English  countryman  meets  a  stray  sheep-dog, 

*  Arroyo  de  la  Cnesta,  '  Gr.  of  Mutsun  lar.ff,'  p.  39,  in  Smithsonian  Contr., 
vol.  iii.  ;  Neapolitan  mamma  mial  exclamation  of  wonder,  &c.,  Liobrocht  in 
Gottin}?.  Gel.  Anz,  1872,  p.  1287. 

8  Shaw,  •  Travels  in  Barbary,'  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  xv.  p.  669. 

'  Some  of  the  examples  here  cited,  will  bo  found  in  Grimm,  '  Deuts<!he 
Gr.'  vol.  iii.  p.  308  ;  Pott,  'Doppelung.'  p.  27  ;  Wedgwood,  '  Origin  of  Lan- 
guage. ' 

VOL.   I.  ■ 


!  i 


Iv 


'■■111        , 

M 

w 

■  ■  1^1 

l!  '^  'i    I' 

p 


v:"! 


p 


Ij 


'     i: 


|i  ii 


iFI    I 


I  :v 


178 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


he  will  simply  call  to  him  fihip  !  ship!  So  schap  nchap  .' 
is  an  Austrian  call  to  sheep,  and  koss  kuhel  kbss  !  to  cows. 
In  German  districts  gus  gns  !  gusch  gvsch  f  gos  gos  !  are  set 
down  as  calls  to  geese ;  and  when  we  notice  that  the 
Bohemian  peasant  calls  hvsy  !  to  tl'iem,  we  remember  that 
the  name  for  goose  in  his  language  is  husa,  a  word  familiar 
to  English  oars  in  the  name  of  John  Huss.  The  Bohemian, 
again,  will  call  to  his  dog  ps  ps  !  but  then  pes  means 
"  dog."  Other  sense-words  addressed  to  animals  break 
down  by  long  repetition  into  mutilated  forms.  When  we  are 
told  that  the  to  to  !  with  which  a  Portuguese  calls  a  dog  is 
short  for  toma  toma  !  (i.e.,  **  take  take ! ")  which  tells  him 
to  come  and  take  his  food,  we  admit  the  explanation  as 
plausible ;  and  the  coop  coop  !  which  a  cockney  might  so 
easily  mistake  for  a  pure  interjection,  is  only  **  Gome  up  ! 


come  up 


\ 


"  Come  uppe,  Whitefoot,  come  uppe,  Lightfoot, 
Come  uppe,  Jetty,  rise  and  follow, 
Jetty,  to  the  milking  shed." 

But  I  cannot  offer  a  plausible  guess  at  the  origin  of  such 
calls  as  hiifhiif  !  to  horses,  liiihl  hiihl !  to  geese,  deckel  deckel ! 
to  sheej).  It  is  fortunate  for  etymologists  that  such  trivial 
little  words  have  not  an  importance  proportioned  to  the 
difiiculty  of  clearing  up  their  origin.  The  word  puss ! 
raises  an  interesting  philological  problem.  An  English 
cliild  calling  puss  puss  t  is  very  likely  keeping  up  the  trace 
of  the  old  Keltic  name  for  the  cat,  Irish  pus,  Erse  pusag, 
Gaelic  puis.  Similar  calls  are  known  elsewhere  in  Europe 
(as  in  Saxony,  pus  pus  /),  and  there  is  some  reason  to  think 
that  the  cat,  wliich  came  to  us  from  the  East,  brought  with 
it  one  of  its  names,  which  is  still  current  there,  Taxoil  piisei! 
Afghan  pusha,  Persian  pushak,  dc.  Mr.  Wedgwood  finds 
an  origin  for  the  call  in  an  imitation  of  the  cat's  spitting, 
and  remarks  that  the  Servians  cry  pis  !  to  drive  a  cat  away, 
while  the  Albanians  use  a  similar  sound  to  call  it.  The 
way  in  which  the  cry  oipuss  I  has  furnished  a  name  for  the 


EMOTIONAL    AND    DIITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


179 


cat  itself,  comes  out  curiously  in  countries  where  the  animal 
has  been  lately  introduced  by  Englishmen.  Thus  boosi  ia 
the  recognized  word  for  cat  in  the  Tonga  Islands,  no  doubt 
from  Captain  Cook's  time.  Among  Indian  tribes  of  North- 
west America,  pwsh,  pish-pish,  appear  in  native  languages 
with  the  meaning  of  cat ;  and  not  only  is  the  European 
cat  called  a  puss  pitss  in  the  Chinook  jargon,  but  in  the 
same  curious  dialect  the  word  is  applied  to  a  native 
beast,  the  cougar,  now  called  ''hyas  puss-puss,^*  i.e.,  "great 
eaf'i 

The  derivation  of  names  of  animals  in  this  manner  from 
calls  to  them,  may  perhaps  not  have  been  unfrequent.  It 
appears  that  huss  !  is  a  cry  used  in  Switzerland  to  set  dogs 
on  to  fight,  as  s — s  !  might  be  in  England,  and  that  the 
Swiss  call  a  dog  luiss  or  hauss,  possibly  from  this.  We 
know  the  cry  of  dill  f  d'llUj  !  as  a  recognized  call  to  ducks  in 
England,  and  it  is  diffi^^ult  to  think  it  a  corruption  of  any 
English  word  or  phrase,  for  the  Bohemians  also  call  dl'ulli ! 
to  their  ducks.  Now,  though  dill  or  dilly  may  not  be  found 
in  our  dictio'"'aries  as  the  name  for  a  duck,  yet  the  way  in 
which  Hood  can  use  it  as  such  in  one  of  his  best  known 
comic  poems,  shows  perfectly  the  easy  and  natural  step  by 
which  such  transitions  can  be  made  : — 


!■.;  11 


1 '  ■ 


i 


i':f'M 


"  For  Death  among  the  water-lilies, 
Cried  '  Duo  ad  me '  to  all  her  dillies." 


In  just  the  same  way,  because  gee  !  is  a  usual  call  of  the 

Enf^lish  waggoner  to  his  horses,  the  word  gee-gee  has  be- 

familiar  nursery  noun   meaning  a   horse.       And 


come 


a 


isci 


f 


Inds 

ing» 

my, 

The 

the 


'  See  Pictet,  'Origin.  Iiido-Enrop.'  part  i.  p.  382  ;  Caldwell,  'Gr.  of  Dra- 
vidian  Lanj^s,' p.  465  ;  Wedf,'\vood,  Die.  s.  v.  'puss,'  etc.  ;  Mariner,  'Tonga 
Is.  Vocab.' ;  Gibbs,  '  Die,  of  Chinook  Jargon,'  Smithsonian  Coll.  No.  161  ; 
Pandosy,  'Gr.  and  Die.  of  Yakania,'  Sinithson.  Contr.  vol.  iii.  ;  compare 
J.  L.  Wilson,  '  Wpongwe  Gr.'  p.  57.  The  Hindu  child's  call  to  the  cat  viun 
muni  may  be  from  Hindust.  nuino  =  cat.  It.  micio,  Fr.  mite,  minan,  Get. 
micze,  etc.= ' cat,'  and  Sp.  mix/  Ger.  minz/  etc.  = ' puss  ! '  are  from  imitation! 
of  a  iiuw. 


V  2 


h 


^^:^*s«:?62;je& 


!  'W'l-?". 


m 


i  ;  in 


180 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


neither  in  such  nursery  words,  nor  in  words  coined  in  jest, 
is  the  evidence  bearing  on  the  origin  of  language  to  be  set 
aside  as  worthless ;  for  it  may  be  taken  as  a  maxim  of 
ethnology,  that  what  is  done  among  civilized  men  in  jest, 
or  among  civilized  children  in  the  nursery,  is  apt  to  find  its 
analogue  in  the  serious  mental  eifort  of  savage,  and  there- 
fore of  primaeval  tribes. 

Drivers'  calls  to  their  beasts,  such  as  this  gee  !  gee-Jio ! 
to  urge  on  horses,  and  weh  !  ivoh  !  to  stop  them,  form  part 
of  the  vernacular  of  particular  districts.  The  gcho  !  perhaps 
came  to  England  in  the  Norman-French,  for  it  is  known  in 
France,  and  appears  in  the  Italian  dictionary  as  gio  !  The 
traveller  who  has  been  hearing  the  drivers  in  the  Grisons 
stop  their  horses  with  a  long  hr-r-r  !  may  cross  a  pass  and 
hear  on  the  other  side  a  Im-ii-ii  !  instead.  The  plough- 
man's calls  to  turn  the  leaders  of  the  team  to  right  and  left 
have  passed  into  proverb.  In  France  they  saj'  of  a  stupid 
clown  *'  II  n'entend  ni  a  dia  !  ni  a  hurhaut !  "  and  the  corre- 
sponding Pliitt-Deutsch  phrase  is  "  He  weet  nich  lintt ! 
noch  hoJi  !  "  So  there  is  a  regular  language  to  camels,  as 
Captain  Burton  remarks  on  his  journey  to  Mekka  :  ikli  ikh  ! 
makes  them  kneel,  ydhli  ydhh  !  urges  them  on,  hai  hai ! 
induces  caution,  and  so  forth.  In  the  formation  of  these 
quaint  expressions,  two  causes  have  been  at  work.  The 
sounds  seem  sometimes  thoroughly  interjectional,  as  the 
Arab  hai !  of  caution,  or  the  French  hue  !  North  German 
jo !  Whatever  their  origin,  they  may  be  made  to  carry 
their  sense  by  imitative  tones  expressive  to  the  ear  of  both 
horse  and  man,  as  any  one  will  say  who  hears  the  contrast 
between  the  short  and  sharp  high-pitched  hiip  !  which  tells 
tlie  Swiss  horse  to  go  faster,  and  the  I  i)ig-drawn  hu-u-ii-u  ! 
wliich  brings  him  to  a  stand.  Also,  the  way  in  which 
common  sense-words  are  taken  up  into  calls  like  gee-up ! 
ivoh-hack  !  shows  that  we  may  expect  to  find  various  old 
broken  fragments  of  formal  language  in  the  list,  and  such 
on  inspection  we  find  accordingly.  The  following  lines  are 
quoted  by  Halliwell  from  the  Micro-Cynicon  (1699)  : — 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


ISl 


"  A  baso  borne  issue  of  a  liaser  syer, 
Bred  in  a  cottage,  wandf'.ing  in  the  niyer, 
With  nailed  shooes  and  whipstaffe  in  his  hand, 
Who  with  a  hey  and  ree  the  beasts  command." 


irry 
kth 
fast 
tells 
Vii ! 
lich 

J  old 

luch 

are 


This  ree!  is  equivalent  to  "  right  "  (riddle-me-ree  =  riddle 
me  right),  and  tells  the  leader  of  the  team  to  bear  to  the 
right  hand.  The  hey !  may  correspond  with  heit !  or 
camether  !  which  call  him  to  bear  "  hither,"  i.  e.,  to  the  left. 
In  Germany  hai' !  hdr  !  har-iih  !  are  likewise  the  same  as 
"her,"  "hither,  to  the  left."  So  sivnde!  schtcude!  zwuder/ 
"to  the  left,"  are  of  course  simply  "  zuwider,"  "on  the 
contrary  way."  Pairs  of  calls  for  "right"  and  "left"  in 
German- speaking  countries  are  hot ! — har  !  and  liott  !— 
wist!  This  tvist  !  is  an  interesting  example  of  the  keeping 
up  of  ancient  words  in  such  popular  tradition.  It  is 
evidently  a  mutilated  form  of  an  old  German  word  for  the 
left  hand,  ivinistrd,  Anglo-Saxon  ic'mstre,  a  name  long 
since  forgotten  by  modern  High  German,  as  by  our  own 
modern  English.^ 

As  quaint  a  mixture  of  words  and  interjectional  cries  as  I 
have  met  with,  is  in  an  old  French  Cyclopaedia,'  which 
gives  a  minute  description  of  the  hunter's  craft,  and  pre- 
scribes exactly  what  is  to  be  cried  to  the  hounds  under  all 
possible  contingencies  of  the  chase.  If  the  creatures 
understood  grammar  and  syntax,  the  language  could  not  be 
more  accurately  arranged  for  their  ears.  Sometimes  we 
have  what  seem  pure  interjectional  cries.  Thus,  to 
encourage  the  hounds  to  work,  the  huntsman  is  to  call  to 
them  ha  halle  halle  halle  !  while  to  bring  them  up  before 
they  are  ue  coupled  it  is  prescribed  that  he  shall  call  }uvil 
hau  !  or  hau  tahaut !  and  when  they  are  uncoupled  he  is  to 


For  lists  of  drivera*  words,  see  Grimm,  1.  c.  ;  Pott,  '  Ziihlniethode,'  p. 
264  ;  Halliwell,  'Die.  of  Archaic  and  Provincial  English,'  s.  v.  'ree  ;'  Brand, 
vol.  ii.  p.  15 ;  Pictet,  part  ii.  p.  489. 

'  *  RecueU  do  Planches  sar  les  Sciences,  les  Arts,  etc'  Paris,  1763,  art 
'  Ghasses. '  The  traditional  cries  are  still  more  or  loss  iu  use.  See  '  A  Week 
in  a  French  Country-house.' 


m 
W 

■Si 


'Vil'l 


^  '..;; 


t    1 


\A 


viim 


182 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAQK 


change  his  cry  to  hau  la  y  la  la  y  la  tayau !  a  call  which 
suggests  the  Norman  original  of  the  English  taJhj-ho ! 
"With  cries  of  this  kind  plain  French  words  are  intermixed, 
hd  hcllement  Id  ila,  Id  ila,  hau  valet  !-rhau  Vami,  tau  tau 
aprf's  npres,  d  route  d  route  !  and  so  on.  And  sometimes 
words  have  broken  down  into  calls  whose  sense  is  not  quite 
gone,  hke  the  "  voil^  ici"  and  the  "  voila  ce  Test,"  which 
are  still  to  be  distiniruished  in  the  shout  which  is  to  tell  the 
hunters  that  the  stag  they  have  been  chasing  has  made  a 
return,  vauleci  revari  vaiileceletz !  But  the  drollest  thing 
in  the  treatise  is  the  grave  set  of  English  words  (in  very 
Gallic  shape)  with  which  English  dogs  are  to  he  spoken  to, 
because,  as  the  author  says,  "  there  are  many  English 
hounds  in  France,  and  it  is  difficult  to  get  them  to  work 
when  you  speak  to  them  in  an  unknown  tongue,  that  is,  in 
other  terms  than  thej'  have  been  trained  to."  Therefore, 
to  call  them,  the  huntsman  is  to  cry  here  do-do  ho  ho  !  to 
get  them  back  to  the  right  track  he  is  to  say  hovpe  hoy, 
hovpe  boy !  when  there  are  several  on  ahead  of  the  rest  of 
the  pack,  he  is  to  ride  up  to  them  and  cry  saf  me  boy,  saf 
me  boy !  and  lastly,  if  they  are  obstinate  and  will  not  stop, 
he  is  to  make  them  go  back  with  a  shout  of  cobat,  cobat ! 

How  far  the  lower  animals  may  attach  any  inherent 
meaning  to  interjectional  sounds  is  a  question  not  easy  to 
answer.  But  it  is  plain  that  in  most  of  the  cases  mentioned 
here  they  only  understand  them  as  recognized  signals 
which  have  a  meaning  by  regular  association,  as  when  they 
remember  that  they  are  fed  with  one  noise  and  driven  away 
with  another,  and  they  also  pay  attention  to  the  gestures 
which  accompany  the  cries.  Thus  the  well-known  Spanish 
way  of  calling  the  cat  is  miz  miz  !  while  zape  zape  !  is  used 
to  drive  it  away ;  and  the  writer  of  an  old  dictionary 
mantains  that  there  can  be  no  real  difference  between  these 
words  except  by  custom,  for,  he  declares,  he  has  heard  that 
in  a  certain  monastery  where  they  kept  ver}'^  handsome  cats, 
the  brother  in  charge  of  the  refectory  hit  upon  the  device  of 
calling  zape  zape  !  to  them  when  he  gave  them  their  foe  d, 


^«™.A.    ..„    ,,„,„,^    ^^^^^^^ 


"«1  thou  he  drove  them  ■  ""  '"' 

~>. --/  and  this  oZz:':i  :  f^'^- "•^•■■"«  ^-^r^y 

eaUu,ga„d  stealing  th  rirT''  any  strange..  L^ 
the  secret...     To  philoWi'ts  th''        ""*  ""  ''"^  '"»'=- 
.«fs  to  animals  become  C™!    ""'""'''  '"  "'''»■■  «»eh 
,tf  ™'-^«>e  consensu     C^S  I  '""•"™'"  '"^*™«^ 
settled.    Each  case  of  the  LT   ,■  "'^  "^  "°''<'s  " 

Prevailed  by  selection  amo„„  !' ""f 'P"'^^  "">*  "  word  has 
the  main  reasons  of  Trd  \„,,T''™r""'^  »'  "X^".  -<! 
P«'cuiar  hmits,  thonghlt  it  o  L  ."'  ^'■'"'""  ^""'- 
e«ctly  in  each  case,  afe  prob'blv     f """  '"  "^^'S"  *'«■" 

&^t  place,  and  traditionaUnS'"'"''?*  "'"'''  >»  t].e 
When  the  ground  ha,  K         ,     ^^  '°  '''^  ^^^c"'"!- 

'^d  --e-wo'ds    the':  rem^if  rf-  "'  °"'^""-  »  ■»«*!■ 
sound-words,   or  purri„7.      ?    ''"'""'  "  '•^^"'"e  of  real 
■■-onably  been  !ZCaXT:{      ^    '"^    '°"°    »^ 
these   expressions  is  a  vTry  tLv    ''         '"  '"''"■'^  »' 
Brosses  describes  tliem  Ti  '^         ™    ""'■      '^''"^    De 
common  to  aU  manl^^  ZiZ'TV"'  °»'"™'  ™rds 
of  man's  confo,™ation  '^SftCfr    '^"'^  combination 
mmd.     One   of  the   be»t  mef^  T'l  """"""^  "'  "« 
bet«-een  interjectional    uttelnct  f  Tf"^  "'"  '''^''"'on 
^''P.-ess,  is  to  compare  thev^s  of  "     .    '    '^^''"'"^  "-^ 
om-  own.     To  a  considerable  elit,         ■'  '°™»'^  "^'h 
As  thetr  bodUyand  mental  str„e™    t'"  ''  "  ^''"^'-•''J'- 
our  own,  so  they  express  thei7m,'dsK        '"'/°«'°«y  "ith 
to  our  ears  a  certain  fitness  for  ll  I  '"""'''  *'*'*  ^ave 
It  .s  so  with  the  baric,  the  howl  I'd  tb  ^^  f'T^  '»  mean, 
the  hissmg  of  geese,  the  purring  „/    .   "'""'  °^  ""e  dog, 
cuccing  of  codes  a^d  hens  Tut  L"!""'  """'"^  -" 
the  nootmg  of  owls  and  the  shrieks  „f''  "'"'''  "^  ^'"^ 
other  bzrds,   we  cannot  suppose  ?,,  /  T™''  ""''  """y 

-ircr.o7-££.»^^^^^^^^^^^ 

--     -ere  are  manyt^ Is'- ;-  ^e^^^^^^^ 


•*        I 


i  > 

t 


^li 


t 

■I . 
>< 

! 


i  I 


i  ( 


1«4 


KMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGK. 


I'  ;'  •  I 


ff  I 


;  I 


■^   i 


II      !#:■ 


1    ( 


'1!      f 
If'! 


but  what,  ju'coidiu}^  to  our  notions  of  the  nieiining  of 
sounds,  would  express  rage  or  dis('i)nirort ;  how  fjir  are  the 
roars  and  howls  of  wihl  boasts  to  be  thus  interpreted  ?  Wo 
might  as  well  imagine  the  tuning  violin  to  be  in  pain,  or 
the  moaning  wind  to  express  sorrow.  The  connexion 
between  interjeetion  and  emotion  depending  on  the  physieal 
slruelure  of  the  animal  which  utters  or  hears  the  sound,  it 
follows  that  the  general  similarity  of  intei;jectional  utter- 
ance among  all  the  vaiieties  of  the  human  race  is  an 
important  manifestation  of  their  close  physical  and  intel- 
lectual unity. 

luterjectional  sounds  uttered  by  man  for  the  expression 
of  his  own  feelings  serve  also  as  signs  indicating  these 
feelings  to  another.  A  long  list  of  such  interjections, 
common  to  races  speaking  the  most  widely  various  lan- 
guages, might  be  set  down  in  a  rough  way  as  representing 
the  sighs,  groans,  moans,  cries,  shrieks,  and  growls  by 
whii  h  nnm  gives  utterance  to  various  of  his  feelings.  Such, 
for  instance,  are  some  of  the  many  sounds  for  which  ah  ! 
oil!  alii  f  air!  are  the  inexpressive  written  representatives; 
such  is  the  sigh  which  is  written  down  in  the  Wolof  hin- 
guiige  of  Africa  as  lihilihc  !  in  English  as  he'igho!  in  Greek 
and  Latin  as  c  I  /  el  /  Ihu  !  c/ieu  !  Thus  the  open-mouthed 
ivah  irah !  of  astonishment,  so  common  in  the  East, 
reappears  in  America  in  the  hwah!  kwah-wa !  of  the 
Chinook  Jargon ;  and  the  kind  of  groan  which  is  repre- 
sented in  European  languages  by  iceli  !  ouais  !  ovai !  vae  !  is 
given  in  Coptic  by  ouae  !  in  Galla  by  ivayo  !  in  the  Ossetic 
of  the  Caucasus  by  voy  !  among  the  Indians  of  British 
Columbia  by  tcoi !  Where  the  interjections  taken  down  in 
the  vocabularies  of  other  languages  dilfer  from  those 
recognized  in  our  own,  we  at  any  rate  appreciate  them  and 
see  how  they  carry  their  meaning.  Thus  with  the  Mala- 
gasy u-u  I  of  pleasure,  the  North  American  Indian's  often 
described  guttural  ngh !  the  kwisJt  I  of  contempt  in  the 
Chinook  Jargon,  the  Tunguz  yo  yo  !  of  pain,  the  Irish  «•& 
ub  I  of  distress,  the  native  Brazilian's  teh  teh  I  of  wondei 


KMOTIONAL    AND     IMITATIVK     I-ANCJUAOK 


is:. 


by 


,'cs ; 
lan- 
rcck 
thed 
iast, 
the 
Ipre- 
/ia 
ietic 
Uish 
1  in 
lose 
and 
[ala- 
l)ften 
the 
li  ich 
idei 


and  reverence,  tlu;  hi-i/ak  !  so  well  known  in  the  Pi^^con- 
Enghsh  of  the  Cliiiiesu  ports,  and  even,  to  take  an  extnMiu! 
case,  the  interjt;ctions  of  surprise  anion}^  the  AIi^'oikiuIm 
Indians,  where  men  say  Ihiii,!  and  women  njjdii  !  It  is 
uuich  the  same  with  (ixprcissions  which  are  not  utt(M'<;d  for 
the  speaker's  saLisfaetion,  hnt  are  calls  addnsscid  to 
another.  Thns  the  Siamese  call  o(  he  !  the  II(;hrew  ha! 
Ii<( !  for  "lo  !  hehold  !  "  the  hn  !  of  the  Clallam  Indians  for 
**  stop  !  "  the  Liimmi  Itul !  for  "hold,  enon^'h  !  " — these 
and  others  like  them  belong  just  as  mu(di  to  I']n;^dish. 
Aiu)Lher  (dass  of  interjections  are  such  as  any  one  convei's- 
ant  with  the  gcsture-sij^ns  of  sava;.jes  and  deaf-mutes  would 
recognize  as  being  themselves  gesture-signs,  made  with  vocal 
sound,  in  short,  voice-gestures.  The  sound  iiiin,  iiCn,  made 
with  the  lips  closed,  is  the  obvious  exi.ression  of  the  man 
who  tries  to  speak,  but  cannot.  Even  the  deaf-and-dumb 
child,  though  he  cannot  hear  the  sound  of  his  own  voice,  makes 
this  noise  to  show  that  he  is  dumb,  that  he  is  via  mn,  as 
the  Vei  negroes  of  West  Africa  wouhl  say.  To  the  speaking 
man,  the  sound  which  we  write  as  mmn!  says  plaiidy 
enough  "  hold  your  tongue  !  "  **  iniiniH  the  word  !  "  and  in 
accordance  with  this  meaning  has  served  to  form  various 
imitative  words,  of  which  a  type  is  Tahitian  mamu,  to  be 
silent.  Often  made  with  a  slight  effort  which  aspirates 
it,  and  with  mcu'e  or  less  continuance,  this  sound  becomes 
what  may  be  indicated  as  *m,  'a,  h'ln,  h'n,  etc.,  interjections 
which  are  conventionally  written  down  as  words,  hem ! 
ahem  !  hein  !  Their  primary  sense  seems  in  any  case  that 
of  hesitation  to  speak,  of  '*  humming  and  hawing,"  but  this 
serves  with  a  varied  intonation  to  express  such  hesitation 
or  refraining  from  articulate  words  as  belongs  either  to 
surprise,  doubt  or  enquiry,  approbation  or  contempt.  In 
the  vocabulary  of  the  Yorubas  of  West  Africa,  the  nasal 
interjection  hurt  is  rendered,  just  as  it  might  be  in  English, 
as  "  fudge !  "  Rochefort  describes  the  Caribs  listening  in 
reverent  silence  to  their  chief's  discourse,  and  testifying 
their  approval  with  a  hun-hiui !  just  as  in  his  time  (17th 


-  i- 


'•V 


■I     •! 


i; 


186 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


• 


N 


'     'li'il 


cent.)  an  English  congregation  would  have  saluted  a 
popular  preacher.'  The  gesture  of  blowing,  again,  is  a 
familiar  expression  of  contempt  and  disgust,  and  when 
vocalized  gives  the  labial  interjections  which  are  written 
pah  !  hah  !  puph  !  pooh  !  in  Welsh  pw  !  in  Low  Latin 
pitppup  !  and  set  down  by  travellers  among  the  savages  in 
Australia  as  pooh !  These  interjections  correspond  with 
the  mass  of  imitative  words  which  express  blowing,  such  as 
Malay  puput,  to  blow.  The  labial  gestures  of  blowing  pass 
into  those  of  spitting,  of  which  one  kind  gives  the  dental 
interjection  t'  t'  t' !  which  is  written  in  English  or  Dutch 
tat  tut !  and  that  this  is  no  mere  fancy,  a  number  of  imita- 
tive verbs  of  various  countries  will  serve  to  show,  Tahitian 
tutua,  to  spit,  being  a  typical  instance. 

The  place  of  interjectional  utterance  in  savage  inter- 
course is  well  shown  in  Cranz's  description.  The  Green- 
landers,  he  says,  especially  the  women,  accompany  many 
words  with  mien  and  glances,  and  he  who  does  not  well 
apprehend  this  may  easily  miss  the  sense.  Thus  when 
they  affirm  anything  with  pleasure  they  suck  down  au*  by 
the  throat  with  a  certain  sound,  and  when  they  deny  any- 
thing with  contempt  or  horror,  they  turn  up  the  nose  and 
give  a  slight  sound  through  it.  And  when  they  are  out  of 
humour,  one  must  understand  more  from  their  gestures 
than  their  words.'  Interjection  and  gesture  combine  to 
form  a  tolerable  practical  means  of  intercourse,  as  where 
the  communication  between  French  and  English  troops  in 
the  Crimea  is  described  as  "consisting  largely  of  such 
interjectional  utterances,  reiterated  with  expressive  emphasis 


?i  ■    m 


•  "  There  prevailed  in  those  days  an  indecent  custom  ;  when  the  preacher 
touched  any  favourite  topick  in  a  manner  that  delighted  his  aiuliencc,  tluir 
approbation  was  expressed  by  a  loud  hum,  cuntiiiued  in  proportion  to  their 
zeal  or  pleasure.  When  Burnet  preached,  part  of  his  congre.fjation  hummed 
so  loudly  and  so  long,  that  he  sat  down  to  enjoy  it,  and  rubbed  his  face  witli 
his  liaudkerchief.  When  Sprat  preached,  he  likewise  was  lionoured  with  the 
like  animating  hum,  but  he  stretched  out  his  hand  to  the  congregation,  and 
cried,  'Peace,  peace  ;  1  pray  you,  peace.*  "    Johnson,  'Life  of  Sprat.' 

»  Cranz,  '  Grbnlaud,'  p.  279. 


^MonoNA.  ^r,  ™itat:ve  ,,A«auAOH. 


„„„.  j(,7 

°™  "onsidcrable  gesticulation  "■      Tl,;«    ,       • 
bnngs  before  us  in  actual  If!  description   well 

"tercourse,  in  whicrtere  t"  "T""  "'  ""'''"•'  '»>"» 
those  articulate  sounls    , rrv,t  .l"      '"'  """"  *''^  -^  »' 
"hid,  are  the  inherited  ZZZT^"'^''"  ""  '""'''i<-. 
When,  however,  we  Took  d  '""'"'•^• 

-nse-words  the.uselves,    e  fintlw  •"!"  "''''  '"''""'"» 
have  actually  had  ^..^  „^  ™°  '  "'  -nterjectional  sounds 

Not  stopping  short  at  thT  fu  1  '"  V^"'"  ''<'™"«on. 
g™.".narians,  of  standing  here'nd  th""'"''''  ■'"  """"  "»- 
»»'e"oe,   the    inteqectifns    W  '  """'"'^  *  '"^^-l 

rounds  out  of  which  verbs  subst»n,°  ''"'''  "^  "'""'J 
speech  have  been  shaped  f"". .  '™!'  """'  ""'^^  P-^s  of 
Jeetions  upward  into  fully  devd  !'"!"' P''°g™««  of  inter- 

W'th  sounds  merely  exprefsi,,;  If  "      ^"S""^'-  ""^   hegin 
When,  however,  exm-essht  "^    ,'  ff  "''^^'^  ''^""'l  ^eUn^s 
-«ered  not  to  'e.h    irthe  s^l!  ""  ""  '  "<>"  P^^'"  at 
»oment,   but  only  in  ordeTto    ''  "^'"*' ^''^""g^  »Hhe 
hought  of  ad„.iration  or  cfc„  V^P^'  '?    """'her  the 
have  httle  or  noticing  to  dis  i  ^."L;  1^"  ?*  i-'orjections 
«'o«'s.     The  next  s^ep  fs    "Ir  f  ^^  fr"""  '''■%  formed 
sounds  into    the  reglr    fL   f  J  V"?      '  ""  °'  ^"^'' 
Famihar  instances  of  such  form!-  ""''^  grammar, 

ourselves  in  nursery  CZtlZ       I  ""^  ^'  '"""'^  ""-ong 
wuh  the  meaning  of  to  s°tof  ^r't";:  '?  "1  '^  '■°""''  »  "- 

acknowledged  part  of  the  E^Ulhl.!!    ''"'  """"S''  hardly 
^-eh  verbs  as  to  «.o.;„„.  t^^'j^'^rS^ '» -hich  belong 
sueh  words  are  those  which  de^  !,         ""''  "hvious  of 
an  inte.,-ect,on,  or  pas    t tncel  ''  "'""'  "■"^™"-  "^ 
meanmg.     Thus  the  Fijian  "vo'        """'   "'"^"'^  "'h^d 
<»&/  becomes  the  verb  o      "  tT    '  "f  "^  '«mentation 
'a-";"'  for"  (the  men  cr^ tfe /,     „'"'"1'.'  "*■«''    "'» 
analogy  with  such  words  af  Jl'  ,  ?"  '^  '"  P^^''^"' 

gr«mn,atical    terminations    ai^.  1.'"  """"■    ^^''h  di^-rent 
Zulu  verb  gigiteka  and  its  E„",    u  ""'"''  '"""^'""''    the 

'  ^^nghsh  equivalent  to  ^i^^i,. 


'  a  Wilson, -ftehUtoric  M.n,>  ,5. 


\ 


M( 


'    1 


I 


I 


1% 

1 

1-  ■  ■ 

lil 

i    . 

r  £H 

188 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


i     ( 


r 


f   !    i 


Ih 


The  Galla  iya,  "to  cry,  scream,  give  the  battle-cry"  has 
its  analogues  in  Greek  Id,  ir/,  "  a  cry,"  iy'fCos  **  wailing, 
mournful,"  etc.  Good  cases  may  be  taken  from  a  curious 
modern  dialect  with  a  strong  propensity  to  the  use  of 
obvious  sound-words,  the  Chiiiook  Jargon  of  North- West 
America.  Here  we  find  adopted  from  an  Indian  dialect 
the  verb  to  kisJi-Jcish,  that  is,  "to  drive  cattle  or  horses  "  ; 
huiiiin  stands  for  the  word  "  stmk,"  verb  or  noun ;  and  the 
laugh,  heehee,  becomes  a  recognized  term  meaning  fun  or 
amusement,  as  in  mamook  heehee,  "to  amuse"  [i.  e.,  "to 
make  hfehee  ")  and  heehee  house,  "  a  tavern."  In  Hawaii, 
aa  is  "  to  insult ;  "  in  the  Tonga  Islands,  ui !  is  at  once 
the  exclamation  "  fie  !  "  and  the  verb  "  to  cry  out  against." 
In  New  Zealand,  h^  !  is  an  interjection  denoting  surprise  at 
a  mistake,  he  as  a  noun  or  verb  meaning  "  error,  mistake, 
to  err,  to  go  astray."  In  the  Quiche  language  of  Guate- 
mala, the  verbs  ay,  oy,  hoy,  express  the  idea  of  "  to  call " 
in  diflerent  ways.  In  the  Carajas  language  of  Brazil,  we 
may  guess  an  inter] actional  origin  in  the  adjective  ei, 
"sorrowful"  (compare  Coptic  eldlo,  "to  wear  a  sorrowful 
countenance  ")  ;  while  we  can  scarcely  fail  to  see  a  deriva- 
tion from  expressive  sound  in  the  verb  hai-hai  "to  run 
away"  (compare  the  word  aie-aie,  used  to  mean  "an 
omnibus "  in  modern  French  slang).  The  Camacan 
Indians,  when  they  wish  to  express  the  notion  of  "  much  " 
or  "many,"  hold  out  their  fingers  and  saj''  hi.  As  this  is 
an  ordinary  savage  gesture  expressing  multitude,  it  seems 
likely  that  the  hi  is  a  mere  interjection,  requiring  the 
visible  sign  to  convey  tlie  full  meaning.^  In  the  Quichua 
language  of  Peru,  alalauf  is  an  interjection  of  complaint  at 
cold,  whence  the  verb  alalauuini,  "to  complain  of  the 
cold."  At  the  end  of  each  strophe  of  the  Peruvian  hynnis 
to  the  Sun  was  sung  the  triumphant  exclamation  haylli ! 
and  with  this  sound  are  connected  the  verbs  hayllini  "  to 
sing,"   Jiayllicuni,   "to   celebrate  a  victory."      The   Zulu 

'  Compare,  in  the  same  district,  Cam^  it,  Cotox6  hiehie,  euhidhici,  iiiultus, 
-a,  -urn. 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE, 


ISO 


Itus, 


halala  !  of  exultation,  which  becomes  also  a  verb  **  to  shout 
for  joy,"  has  its  analogues  in  the  Tibetan  alala  !  of  joy, 
and  the  Greek  a\a\a,  which  is  used  as  a  noun  meaning  the 
battle-cry  and  even  the  onset  itself,  AXaAd^co,  "  to  raise  the 
war-cry,"  as  well  as  Hebrew  h'dlel,  "to  sing  praise,"  whence 
hallelujah  f  a  word  which  the  believers  in  the  theory  that 
the  Red  Indians  were  the  Lost  Tribes  naturally  recognized 
in  the  native  medicine-man's  chant  oi  hi-le-li-lah  !  The  Zulu 
makes  his  panting  ha  !  do  duty  as  an  expression  of  heat, 
when  he  says  that  the  hot  weather  "says  Ita  ha  "  ;  his  way  of 
pitching  a  song  by  a  ha  !  ha  !  is  apparently  represented  in 
the  verb  haya,  "to  lead  a  song,"  hayo  "a  starting  song,  a 
fee  given  to  the  singing-leader  for  the  haya "  ;  and  his 
interjectional  expression  ha  ha!  **  as  when  one  smacks  his 
lips  from  a  bitter  taste,"  becomes  a  verb-root  meaning  "  to 
be  bitter  or  sharp  to  the  taste,  to  prick,  to  smart."  The 
Galla  language  gives  some  good  examples  of  interjections 
passing  into  words,  as  where  the  verbs  blrr-djeda  (to  s,a.y 
hrr!)  and  hiiefada  (to  make  hrr !)  have  the  meaning  "to  be 
afraid."  Thus  o!  being  the  usual  answer  to  a  call,  and 
also  a  cry  to  drive  cattle,  ti.  ev^  are  formed  from  it  by  the 
addition  of  verbal  terminations,  the  verbs  oada,  "  to 
answer,"  and  ofa,  "to  drive." 

The  capabilities  of  an  interjection  in  modifying  words, 
when  language  chooses  to  avail  itself  thoroughly  of  them, 
may  be  seen  in  the  treatment  of  this  same  interjection  o  ! 
in  the  Japanese  grammar.^  It  is  used  before  substantives 
as  a  prefix  of  honour;  couni,  "country,"  thus  becoming 
ocouni.  When  a  man  is  talking  to  his  superiors,  he  puts 
o  before  the  names  of  all  objects  belonging  to  them,  while 
these  superiors  drop  the  o  in  speaking  of  anything  of  their 
own,  or  an  inferior's ;  among  the  higher  classes,  persons  of 
equal  rank  put  o  before  the  names  of  each  other's  things, 
but  not  before  their  own ;  it  is  polite  to  say  o  before  the 
names   of    all    women,   and   well-bred    children   are    dis- 

'  J  H.  Donker  Curtius,  'Essai  de  Grammaire  Japonaise,'  p.  34,  eto.  199. 


,  •■ 

1 

■li 

i      i 

' 

'i.t- 

%' 

i 

I 

^ 

I 

% 

i 

f 

hi 

I* 

4 


If 


!il 


M' 


r, 


'''liH 


aMMMM 


^■| 


I 


190 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


tiiiguished  from  little  peasants  by  the  way  in  which  they 
ure  careful  to  put  it  even  before  the  nursery  names  of  father 
and  mother,  o  toto,  o  caca,  which  correspond  to  the  papa 
and  mama  of  Europe.  The  o  is  also  used  to  convey  a 
distinct  notion  of  eminence,  and  even  to  distinguish  the 
male  gender  from  the  female;  as  o  m*ma,  a  horse,  from  me 
m*ma,  a  mare.  A  distinction  is  made  in  written  language 
between  o,  which  is  put  to  anything  royal,  and  oo  (pro- 
nounced 0-0  not  u)  which  means  great,  as  may  be  instanced 
in  the  use  of  the  word  mcts'k^,  or  "spy"  (literally  "eye- 
fixer  ") ;  o  mctske  is  a  princely  or  imperial  spy,  while 
00  mets'ke  is  the  spy  in  chief.  This  inter] ectional  adjective 
00,  gi'eat,  is  usuall}'  prefixed  to  the  name  of  the  capital  city, 
which  it  is  customary  to  call  oo  Yedo  in  speaking  to  one  of 
its  inhabitants,  or  when  officials  talk  of  it  among  them- 
selves. And  lastly,  the  o  of  honour  is  prefixed  to  verbs  in  all 
their  forms  of  conjugation,  and  it  is  polite  to  say  ominahai 
matse,  "  please  to  see,"  instead  of  the  mere  plebeian 
minahai  matse.  Now  the  slightest  consideration  shows  that 
an  English  child  of  six  years  old  would  at  once  understand 
these  formations ;  and  if  we  do  not  thus  incorporate  in  our 
grammar  the  o !  of  admiration  and  reverential  embarrass- 
ment, it  is  merely  because  we  have  not  chosen  to  take 
advantage  of  this  rudimentary  means  of  expression. 
Another  closely  allied  exclamation,  the  cry  of  in  !  has  taken 
its  place  in  etymology.  AVhcn  added  by  the  German  to 
his  cry  of  "Fire!"  "Murder!'  Feuerio !  Mordio !  it 
remains  indeed  as  mere  an  interjection  as  the  o  !  in  bur 
street  cries  of  "  Pease-o  /  "  "  Dust-o  .'  "  or  the  df  in  old 
German  wafend !  "to  arms!"  hil/d f  "help!"  But  the 
Iroquois  of  North  America  makes  a  fuller  use  of  his 
materials,  and  carries  his  io  !  of  admiration  into  the  very 
formation  of  compound  words,  adding  it  to  a  noun  to  say 
that  it  is  beautiful  or  good :  thus,  in  Mohawk,  garonta 
means  a  tree,  <jaron.tio  a  beautiful  tree;  in  like  manner, 
Ohio  means  "river-beautiful:"  and  Ontario,  "hill-rock- 
beautiful,"  is  derived  in  the  same  way.     When,  in  the  old 


l^-' 


EMOTIONAL    AND    WIITATIVE    LANOrAGE. 


191 


times  of  the  French  occupation  of  Canada,  there  was  sent 
over  a  Governor- General  of  New  France,  Monsieur  de 
Montmagny,  the  Iroquois  rendered  his  name  from  their 
word  onoiite,  **  mountain,"  translating  him  into  Onontio,  or 
*'  Great  Mountain,"  and  thus  it  came  to  pass  that  the  name 
of  Onontio  was  handed  dowm  long  after,  like  that  of  Csesar, 
as  the  title  of  each  succeeding  governor,  while  for  the  King 
of  France  was  reserved  the  yet  higher  style  of  "  the  great 
Onontio."  ^ 

The  quest  of  interjectional  derivations  for  sense-words  is 
apt  to  lead  the  etymologist  into  very  rash  speculations. 
One  of  his  best  safeguards  is  to  test  forms  supposed  to  be 
interjectional,  by  asceitaining  whether  anything  similar  has 
come  into  use  in  decidedly  distinct  languages.  For  instance, 
among  the  familiar  sounds  which  fall  on  the  traveller's  ear 
in  Spain  is  the  muleteer's  cry  to  his  beasts,  arre  !  arre  ! 
From  this  interjection,  a  family  of  Spanish  words  are 
reasonably  supposed  to  be  derived ;  the  verb  arrear,  "  to 
drive  mules,"  arriero,  the  name  for  the  "  muleteer  "  him- 
self, and  so  forth.^  Now  is  this  arre  !  itself  a  genuine 
interjectional  sound  ?  It  seems  likely  to  be  so,  for  Captain 
"Wilson  found  it  in  use  in  the  Pelew  Islands,  where  the 
paddlers  in  the  canoes  were  kept  up  to  their  work  by  crying 
to  them  arree !  arree  !  Similnr  interjections  are  noticed 
elsewhere  with  a  sense  of  mere  affirmation,  as  in  an  Aus- 
tralian dialect  where  a-ree !  is  set  down  as  meaning 
"  indeed,"  and  in  the  Quichua  language  where  ari  !  means 
"  yes  !  "  whence  the  verb  ar'mi,  "  to  affirm."  Two  other 
cautions  are  desirable  in  such  enquiries.  These  are,  not  to 
travel  too  far  from  the  absolute  meaning  expressed  by  the 
interjection,  unless  there  is  strong  corroborative  evidence, 


i  f 


.{.  •; 


*  Bniyas,  '  Mohawk  Lnng.'  p.  16,  in  Smithson.  Contr,  vol.  iii.  Schoolcraft 
•Indian  Tribes,' Part  iii.  p.  328,  602,  fi07.  Charlevoix,  '  Nouv.  France,' 
vol.  i.,  p.  S.'JO., 

'  The  arre/  may  have  been  introduced  into  Europe  by  the  Moors,  m  it  ia 
used  in  Arabic,  and  its  use  in  Eurojje  corresponds  nearly  with  the  limits  of 
the  Moorish  coiupiest,  in  Spain  arre/  in  Pi'ovence  arri/ 


192 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


17  -■ 


•m 


and  not  to  override  ordinary  etymology  by  treating  deri- 
vative words  as  though  they  were  radical.  "Without  these 
cheeks,  even  sound  principle  breaks  down  in  application,  as 
the  following  two  examples  may  show.  It  is  quite  true  that 
h^m  !  is  a  common  interjectional  call,  and  that  the  Dutch 
have  made  a  verb  of  it,  hcmvien,  "  to  hem  after  a  person." 
We  may  notice  a  similar  call  in  West  Africa,  in  the  mma  ! 
which  is  translated  "hallo!  stop!"  in  the  language  of 
Fernando  Po.  But  to  apply  this  as  a  derivation  for  German 
hcmnien,  '*  to  stop,  check,  restrain,"  to  liem  in,  and  even  to 
the  hem  of  a  garment,  as  Mr.  Wedgwood  does  without  even 
u  perhaps,^  is  travelling  too  far  beyond  the  record.  Again, 
it  is  quite  true  that  sounds  of  clicking  and  smacking  of  the 
lips  are  common  expressions  of  satisfaction  all  over  the 
world,  and  words  may  be  derived  from  these  sounds,  as 
where  a  vocabulary  of  the  Chinook  language  of  North-West 
America  expresses  "good"  as  fk-tok-te,  or  e-tok-tc,  sounds 
which  we  cannot  doubt  to  be  derived  from  such  clicking 
noises,  if  the  words  are  not  in  fact  attempts  to  write  down 
the  very  clicks  themselves.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  we 
may  take  such  words  as  delic'ue,  ddicdtns,  out  of  a  highly 
organized  language  like  Latin,  and  refer  them,  as  the  same 
etymologist  does,  to  an  interjectional  utterance  of  satisfac- 
tion, dl'ickP  To  do  this,  is  to  ignore  altogether  the  compo- 
sition of  words ;  we  might  as  well  explain  Latin  d'dectus 
or  English  dd'ight  as  direct  formations  from  expressive 
sound.  In  concluding  these  remarks  on  interjections,  two 
or  three  groups  of  words  may  be  brought  forward  as 
examples  of  the  application  of  collected  evidence  from  a 
number  of  languages,  mostly  of  the  lower  races. 

The  affirmative  and  negative  particles,  which  bear  in  lan- 
guage such  meanings  as  "  yes  !  "  "  indeed  !  "  and  "  no  !  " 
"not,"  may  have  their  derivations  from  many  different 
sources.  It  is  thought  that  the  Australian  dialects  all 
belong  to  a  single  stock,  but  so  unlike  are  the  sounds  they 


1  ' ;  m 


'I  '.  W'<  {  ii'ifr 


•  Wedgwood,  '  Origin  of  Language,'  p.  92. 
=  Ibid.,  p.  72. 


I..MOTI0NAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


]i)3 


use  for  **  no  !  "  and  "yes  !  *'  that  tribes  are  actually  named 
from  these  words  as  a  convenient  means  of  distinction. 
Thus  the  tribes  known  as  Gurcang,  Kmnilnroi,  Kogai, 
Wolaroi,  Wailwun,  friratheroi,  have  their  names  from  the 
words  they  use  for  "no,"  these  being  gure,  kamil,  ko, 
ivol,  wail,  ivira,  respectively ;  and  on  the  other  hand  the 
Pikambul  are  said  to  be  so  called  from  their  word  pika, 
"  yes."  The  device  of  naming  tribes,  thus  invented  by  the 
savages  of  Australia,  and  which  perhaps  recurs  in  Brazil  in 
the  name  of  the  Cocatapuya  tribe  {coca  "no,"  tapiiya  "  man  ") 
is  very  curious  in  its  similarity  to  the  medieval  division  of 
Langiie  d'oc  and  Langue  d'o'il,  according  to  the  words  for 
"yes  !  "  which  prevailed  in  Southern  and  Northern  France  : 
oc!  is  Latin  Jioc,  as  we  might  say  "  that's  it !  "  while  the 
longer  form  hoc  illiid  was  reduced  to  oil !  and  thence  to 


oui !  Manv  other  of  the  words 


for  "yes  !  "  and  "  no 


may 


be  sense-words,  as,  again,  the  French  and  Italian  si !  is  Latin 
sic.  But  on  the  other  hand  there  is  reason  to  think  that 
many  of  these  particles  in  use  in  various  languages  are  not 
sense-words,  but  sound-words  of  a  purely  intei'jectional 
kind ;  or,  what  comes  nearly  to  the  same  thing,  a  feeling  of 
fitness  of  the  sound  to  the  meaning  may  have  affected  the 
choice  and  shapin;.'  of  sense-words — a  remark  of  large  appli- 
cation in  such  enquiries  as  the  present.  It  is  an  old 
suggestion  that  the  primitive  sound  of  such  words  as  nan  is 
a  nasal  interjection  of  doubt  or  dissent.^  It  corresponds  in 
sound  (vitli  the  visible  gesture  of  closing  the  lips,  while  a 
vowel-interjection,  with  or  without  aspiration,  belongs 
rather  to  open-mouthed  utterance.  Whether  from  this  or 
some  other  cause,  there  is  a  remarkable  tendency  among 
most  distant  and  various  languages  of  the  world,  on  the  one 
hand  to  use  vowel-sounds,  with  soft  or  hard  breathing,  to 
express  "  yes  !  "  and  on  the  other  hand  to  use  nasal  conso- 
nants to  express  "  no  !  "  The  affirmative  form  is  much  the 
commoner.  The  guttural  i-i !  of  the  West  Australian,  the  ee! 


i  I 


H 


m\ 


li 


'  De  Brosses,  vol.  L  p.  203.     See  Wedgwood. 


VOL.   I. 


O 


(i 


194 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


i  ■'!■ 


I  t 


of  the  Darien,  the  a-ah  !  of  the  Clallam,  the  ^/  of  the  Yakama 
Indians,  the  e  !  of  the  Basuto,  and  the  ai  !  of  the  Kanuri, 
are  some  examples  of  a  wide  group  of  forms,  of  which  the 
following  are  only  part  of  those  noted  down  in  Polynesian 
and  South  American  districts  —  iif  6  !  ia  !  aio  /  io  !  ya ! 
ey  !  etc.,  /i'  /  heh  !  he-e  !  hu  !  hoehah  !  ah-ha  !  etc.  The 
idea  has  most  weight  where  pairs  of  words  for  "  yes  !  **  and 
"  no  !  "  are  found  both  conforming.  Thus  in  the  very 
suggestive  description  by  Dobrizhoffer  among  the  Abipones 
of  South  America,  for  "  yes  !  "  the  men  and  youths  say  hii! 
the  women  say  K&6L !  and  the  old  men  give  a  grunt ;  while 
for  "no  "  they  all  say  yna  !  and  make  the  loudness  of  the 
sound  indicate  the  strength  of  the  negation.  Dr.  Martius's 
collection  of  vocabularies  of  Brazilian  tribes,  philologically 
very  distinct,  contains  several  such  pairs  of  affirmatives  and 
negatives,  the  equivalents  of  "  yes  !  "  —  '*  no  !  "  being  in 
Tupi  aye  ! — aan  !  aani  !  ;  in  Guato  ii  ! — mau  ! ;  in  Jumana, 
aeae  ! — mii'm  ! :  in  Miranha  ha  u  ! — nani !  The  Quicliua 
of  Peru  affirms  by  y  !  hu !  and  expresses  **  no,''  "  not,"" 
**  not  at  all,"  by  ama  !  manan  !  etc.,  making  from  the  latter 
the  verb  manamni,  "  to  deny."  The  Quiche  of  Guate- 
mala has  e  or  ve  for  the  affirmative,  ma,  man,  mana,  for  the 
negative.  In  Africa,  again,  the  Galla  language  has  ee  !  for 
"  yes  !  "  and  hn,  hin,  hm,  for  "  not !  " ;  the  Fernandian  ee  ! 
for  "  yep, !  "  and  ''nt  for  "  not ; "  while  the  Coptic  dictionary 
gives  the  affirmative  (Latin  "  sane '')  as  eie,  ie,  and  the 
negative  by  a  long  list  of  nasal  sounds  such  as  an,  emmen, 
en,  mmn,  etc.  The  Sanskrit  particles  hi !  "indeed,  certainly," 
nil,  "  not,"  exemi^lify  similar  forms  in  Indo-European  lan- 
guages, down  to  our  own  aje  !  and  no  !^  There  must  be  some 
meaning  in  all  this,  for  otherwise  I  could  hardly  have  noted 
down  incidentally,  witJiout  making  any  attempt  at  a  general 
fiearch,  so  many  cases  from  such  different  languages,  only 
finding  a  comparatively  small  number  of  contradictory  cases.^ 


1  li^; 


*  Also  Oraon  hae—anibo  ;  Micnian  i — mw. 

'  A  double  contradiction  in  Carib  anhan  /=  "  yes  I"  ouaf=  "  no  !"    Single 
ooutradictions  in  Catoquioa /ia/i()r  /    Tapieim/    Botocndo  hemJiem/    Yorubft 


r  f 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


195 


De  Brosses  maintained  that  the  Latin  stare,  to  stand, 
might  be  traced  to  an  origin  in  expressive  sound.  He 
fancied  he  could  hear  in  it  an  organic  radical  sign  designating 
fixity,  and,  could  thus  explain  why  st !  should  be  used  as  a 
call  to  make  a  man  stand  still.  Its  connexion  with  these 
sounds  is  often  spoken  of  in  more  modern  books,  and  one 
imaginative  German  philologer  describes  their  origin  among 
primsBval  men  as  vividly  as  though  he  had  been  there 
to  see.  A  man  stands  beckoning  in  vain  to  a  companion 
who  does  not  see  him,  till  at  last  his  effort  relieves  itself  by 
the  help  of  the  vocal  nerves,  and  involuntarily  there  breaks 
from  him  the  sound  st  !  Now  the  other  hears  the  sound, 
turns  toward  it,  sees  the  beckoning  gesture,  knows  that  he 
is  called  to  stop ;  and  when  this  has  happened  again  and 
again,  the  action  comes  to  be  described  in  common  talk  by 
uttering  the  now  familiar  st !  and  thus  sta  becomes  a  root, 
the  symbol  of  the  abstract  idea  to  stand  !  *  This  is  a  most 
ingenious  conjecture,  but  unfortunately  nothing  more.  It 
would  be  at  any  rate  strengthened,  though  not  established, 
if  its  supporters  could  prove  that  the  st !  used  to  call 
people  in  Germany,  pst  !  in  Spain,  is  itself  a  pure  interjec- 
tional  sound.  Even  this,  however,  has  never  been  made 
out.  The  call  has  not  yet  been  shown  to  be  in  use  outside 
our  own  Indo-European  family  of  languages ;  and  so  long  as 
it  is  only  found  in  use  within  these  limits,  an  opponent  might 
even  plausibly  claim  it  as  an  abbreviation  of  the  very  sta  ! 
("stay!  stop!")  for  which   the   theory  proposes  it  as  an 


li 


j*j   ,'|S 


"kit 


origm." 


eA/  for  "yes  I"  CvUmo  aiyf  Australian  yo/  for  "nol"  &c.  How  much 
these  sounds  depend  on  peculiar  intonation,  we,  who  habitually  use  A'?«/ 
either  for  "  yes  !  "  or  "  no  I "  can  well  understand. 

'  (Cliarles  de  Brosses)  'Traite  de  la  Formation  M6canique  des  Langues, 
etc'  Paris,  An  ix.,  vol.  i.  p.  238  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  313.  Lazarus  and  Steiuthal, 
•Zeitschrift  fiir  Vblkerpsychologie,*  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  421.  ileyse,  'System  der 
Sprachwissenschaft,'  p.  73,     Farrar,  'Chapters  on  Language,'  p.  202. 

'  Similar  sounds  are  used  to  command  silence,  to  stop  speaking  as  well  as 
to  stop  going.  English  hushtt  whist!  hist!  Welsh  ustl  French  chuH 
Italian  littol  Swedish  tysti  Russian  sV  I  and  the  Latin  sti  so  well  described 

o  2 


t  ,fl 


1.; 


196 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


M 


I  •• 


TImt  it  is  not  unfair  to  ask  for  fuller  evidence  of  a 
sound  being  purely  interjectional  than  its  appearance  in  a 
single  family  of  languages,  may  be  shown  by  examining 
another  group  of  interjections,  which  are  found  among  the 
remotest  tribes,  and  thus  have  reall}'^  considerable  claims  to 
rank  among  the  primary  sounds  of  language.  These  are 
the  simple  sibilants,  s  !  sh  !  h'sh!  used  especially  to  scare 
birds,  and  among  men  to  express  aversion  or  call  for  silence. 
Catlin  describes  a  party  of  Sioux  Indians,  when  they  came 
to  the  portrait  of  a  dead  chief,  each  putting  his  hand  over 
his  mouth  with  a  hiish-sh  !  and  when  he  himself  wished  to 
approach  the  sacred  "medicine"  in  a  Mandan  lodge,  he 
was  called  to  refrain  by  the  same  hush-sh  !  Among  our- 
selves the  sibilant  interjection  passes  into  two  exactly 
opposite  senses,  according  as  it  is  meant  to  put  the  speaker 
himself  to  silence,  or  to  command  silence  for  him  to  be 
heard  ;  and  thus  we  find  the  sibilant  used  elsewhere,  some- 
times in  the  one  way  and  sometimes  in  the  other.  Among 
the  wild  Veddahs  of  Ceylon,  iss  !  is  an  exclamation  of 
disapproval,  as  in  ancient  or  modern  Europe  ;  and  the  verb 
sliarak,  to  hiss,  is  used  in  Hebrew  with  a  like  sense, 
"they  shall  hiss  him  out  of  his  place."  But  in  Japan 
reverence  is  expressed  by  a  hiss,  commanding  silence. 
Captain  Cook  remarked  that  the  natives  of  the  New 
Hebrides  expressed  their  admiration  by  hissing  like  geese. 
Casalis  says  of  the  Basutos,  "  Hisses  are  the  most  un- 
equivocal marks  of  applause,  and  are  as  much  courted  in 
the  African  parliaments  as  they  are  dreaded  by  our  candi- 
dates for  popultu*  favour."*     Among  other  sibilant  inteijec- 


in  the  curious  old  line  quoted  by  Mr.  Farrar,  which  compares  it  with  the 
gesture  of  the  finger  on  the  lips  : — 

"Isis,  et  Harpocrates  digito  qui  significat  stt" 

This  group  of  interjections,  again,  has  not  been  proved  to  be  in  use  outside 
Aryan  limits. 

'  Catlin,  'Noith  American  Indians,'  vol.  i.  pp.  221,  39,  151,  162.  Bailey 
in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc.,'  vol.  ii.  p.  318.  Job  xxvii.  23.  (The  verb  ahdrak  also 
signifies  to  call  by  a  hiss,  "and  ho  will  hiss  unto  them  from  the  end  of  the 


;ji 


Fen.a,Klia„  Ha!  "  listen ! "  "t^^   '.^  v    '  ^      "  ''"^"=« '  " 

Thus  It  appears  that  these  so,  1 1  '  <•    ,    ^^  "° '  "  l'^'""'!  " 

,<">«  linguistic  family    are  verv'    ;  ™"'  "'^'"^  ^P^eialto 

Imman   speech.     Nor  is  thlrf  '"''''■'P'''"^  ^kments  of 

passage  into  fuUy.for„,ed  wol   ^'^'  •''"'"'°"  "'   *»   "'«ir 

;'h.eh  has  passed  into  tlesr,™e„'f"t"  ""' ^'^  '»  '"'"'. 
(adjectivelj.,  "as  hmh  as  deu    ••)  !„  ,     ,''""^''  >""  '»  ^'''ep" 

"matter,  or  Greek  ..^1"  to  I ,'  T"'  '""""''  '"  *"'''  "P 
-Jence."  Even  Latin  .;,,„„.7'' .  ^■■'^,  ''"»'"  eomniand 
-ay  with  some  plausibility  be  exuhV"""'  "'"  •'^^"-'V' 
"■terjectional  s  !  „f  ^Uence  '  *'  '''"■"•'''  fr"""  the 

^^^trz':^  ~  ^-"^  '"''^■^  -. 

^fi««    a.,«.maMngr"'X  tr  ''"■'™"°°'  ^'""'  -e 

J-ehsious  exclamation!  „/■•  and     r^Tr   "'   "'^    ■''■'•^'- 
h;3s."    Beside  these  obvious  forlff',""^-^"™'')'   "■> 
element  is  present  to  someg"eatr„  r"''/'''  '«^':i«^-«onal 
Sauskrit  radicals,  which  reptsem  "orM^F'*^ "  '"^ '■^' »' 
of  any  other  language  the  verb    '^"'"'"^  "'"""■""'"  those 
»tock.    In  „,  'Uo^o!  /e;  ::ar '7.'  'f-ncient  Aryan 
^-e  have  the  simpler  k  nd  rf  wl      f-  ""  ''"'''''  "t"  laugh," 
which  merely  describes  a  sound     aTT:   "'"''''""'  ''-' 
k.n<i,wluch  carry  the  sense  int!.:  °  "'"  '"'"■<'  ^f"™" 

makes  out  a  strong  caeflthe?;" ''"^*''  ""  '^^"^-ood 
of  loathing  and  aversion     uch  al  TT^T."^  "teriections 
large  group  of  words  whi.  h  are  rf         '^^  '  ''"-  '^'«>  that 
/<«^  and  fi.,,,,  i„  Sanskrit  by  ^elrh"'"'  "  ''"="'^''  "'^ 
^o">.  to  stink,"  and  ,,. ,.,.  -^  t^f  ^^to^- ;,' .^  ^ 

Giimrn'o  1  .„  ^'^"'^i'l^.  ;B«<r2'rfj/«   p„fk-    ^.         "^^  ^^o  tile  present 

^""  »  law  as  xf  words  derived  /o.u  a  "'.S  tf  ^  f  "«"^'>/"«^.  folio; 

gie  root.     Admitting  this,  how- 


f  ',    15 


,1 


i 


I  h 


i, 


9* 


*ii 


1 


I  [ 


'  ■' 


198 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


i    :! 


r  .;n 


rfl: 


evidence  may  be  here  adduced  in  support  of  this  theory. 
The  languages  of  the  lower  races  use  the  sound  pu  to 
express  an  evil  smell ;  the  Zulu  remarks  that  "  the  meat 
says  pu "  (inyama  iti  pit),  meaning  that  it  stinks ;  the 
Timorese  has  poop  "putrid;"  the  Quiche  language  has 
piih,p(h  "corruption,  pus,"  polar  "to  turn  bad,  rot,"  p\iz 
**  rottenness,  what  stinks ;  "  the  Tupi  word  for  nasty,  puxi, 
may  be  compared  with  the  Latin  putidiis,  and  the  Columbia 
Eiver  name  for  the  "skunk,"  o-jnin-pun,  with  similar  names 
of  stinking  animals,  Sanskrit  2>/?<iA;a  "civet-cat,"  and  French 
putois  "  pole-cat."  From  the  French  interjection^ .'  words 
have  long  been  formed  belonging  to  the  language,  if  not 
authenticated  by  the  Academy;  in  mediteval  French  *  maistre 
fi-Ji,'  was  a  recognized  term  for  a  scavenger,  and^-^  books 
are  not  yet  extinct. 

There  has  been  as  yet,  unfortunately,  too  much  separa- 
tion between  what  may  be  called  generative  philology,  wliich 
examines  into  the  ultimate  origins  of  words,  and  historical 
philology,  wliich  traces  their  transmission  and  change.  It 
will  be  a  great  gain  to  the  science  of  language  to  bring  these 
two  branches  ol  enquiry  into  closer  union,  even  as  the 
processes  they  relate  to  have  been  going  on  together  since 
the  earliest  days  of  speech.  At  present  the  historical  phi- 
lologists of  the  school  of  Grimm  and  Bopp,  whose  great 
work  has  been  the  tracing  of  our  Indo-European  dialects  to 
an  early  Aryan  form  of  language,  have  had  much  the 
advantage  in  fulness  of  evidence  and  strictness  of  treatment. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  evident  that  the  views  of  the  genera- 

ever,  the  question  has  to  be  raised,  how  far  pure  interjections  and  their  direct 
derivatives,  being  self-expressive  and  so  to  speak  living  sounds,  are  affected 
by  jihouetic  changes  such  as  that  of  Grimm's  law,  which  act  ou  articulate 
sounds  no  longer  fully  expressive  in  themselves,  but  handed  down  by  mere 
tradition.  Thus  p  and /occur  in  one  and  the  same  dialect  in  interjections  of 
disgust  and  aversion,  puh/  fit  being  used  in  Venice  or  Paris,  just  as  similar 
sounds  would  be  in  London.  In  tracing  tliis  group  of  words  from  early  Aryan 
forms,  it  must  also  be  noticed  that  Sanskrit  is  a  very  imperfect  guide,  for  its 
alphabet  has  no/,  and  it  can  hardly  give  the  rule  in  this  matter  to  laiiguagofc 
possessing  both  p  and  /,  and  thus  capable  of  nicer  appreciation  of  this  class 
<if  interjections. 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


199 


tive  philologists,  from  De  Brosses  onward,  embody  a  sound 
principle,  and  that  much  of  the  evidence  collected  as  to 
emotional  and  other  directly  expressive  words,  is  of  the 
highest  value  in  the  argument.  But  in  working  out  the 
details  of  such  word-formation,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
no  department  of  philology  lies  more  open  to  Augustine's 
caustic  remark  on  the  etymologists  of  his  time,  that  like  the 
interpretation  of  dreams,  the  derivation  of  words  is  set 
down  by  each  man  according  to  his  own  fancy.  (Ut 
somniorum  interpretatio  ita  verborum  origo  pro  cujusqu- 
ingenio  preedicatur.) 


M  n 


'>il 


o 
e 


ct 


lufc 


ill 


\\\\ 

m 


.  i;': 


if 


¥.. 


(i 


J 


' :         ^ 


'     '^h 


wm 


Iff- 


CHAPTER    VI. 

EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE   LANGUAGE    {continued^. 

imitative  Words— Human  actions  named  from  sound— Animals'  names  from 
cries,  etc. — Musical  Instruments — Sounds  reproduced — Words  modified 
to  adapt  sound  to  sense— Keiluj)lication — Graduation  of  vowels  to  express 
distance  and  difference— Cliildi  en's  Language— Sound-words  as  related  to 
Sense-words — Language  an  original  product  of  the  lower  Culture. 

From  the  earliest  times  of  language  to  our  own  day,  it  is 
unlikely  that  men  ever  quite  ceased  to  be  conscious  that 
some  of  their  words  were  derived  from  imitation  of  the 
common  sounds  heard  about  them.  In  our  own  modern 
English,  for  instance,  results  of  such  imitation  are  evident ; 
flies  buzz,  bees  hum,  snakes  hiss,  a  cracker  or  a  bottle  of 
ginger-beer  poys,  a  cannon  or  a  bittern  booms.  In  the 
words  for  animals  and  for  musical  instruments  in  the 
various  languages  of  the  world,  the  imitation  of  their  cries 
and  tones  is  often  to  be  plainly  heard,  as  in  the  names  of 
the  hoopoe,  the  ai-ai  sloth,  the  kaka  parrot,  the  Eastern 
tomtom,  which  is  a  drum,  the  African  idule,  which  is  a  flute, 
the  Siamese  khong-bong,  which  is  a  wooden  harmonicon,  and 
so  on  through  a  host  of  other  words.  But  these  evident 
cases  are  far  from  representing  the  whole  efiects  of  imitation 
or  the  growth  of  language.  They  form,  indeed,  the  easy 
entrance  to  a  philological  region,  which  becomes  less  pene- 
trable the  farther  it  is  explored. 

The  operations  of  which  we  see  the  results  before  us  in 
the  actual  languages  of  the  world  seem  to  have  been  some- 
what as  follows.  Men  have  imitated  their  o^\u  emotional 
utterances  or  interjections,  the  cries  of  animals,  the  tones  of 


EMOTIONAL    AXD    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


201 


',  it  is 
J  that 

if  the 

odein 

(lent ; 

tie  of 

In  the 

In   the 
cries 

lues  of 

[astern 
flute, 
.n,  and 
ivident 
itation 
|e  easy 
pene- 

us  in 

some- 
lotional 
jnes  of 


musical  instrnments,  tlu  sounds  of  shouting,  howling, 
stamping,  breaking,  tearing,  scraping,  and  so  forth,  which 
are  all  day  coming  to  tluir  ears,  and  out  ol  lliese  imitations 
many  current  words  indisputably  have  their  source.  But 
these  words,  as  we  find  them  in  use,  differ  often  widely, 
often  beyond  all  recognition,  from  the  original  sounds  they 
sprang  from.  In  the  first  place,  man's  voice  can  only  make 
a  vei'y  rude  copy  of  most  sounds  his  ear  receives  ;  his  pos- 
sible vowels  are  very  limited  in  their  range  compared  with 
natural  tones,  and  his  possible  consonants  still  more  helpless 
as  a  means  of  imitating  natural  noises.  Moreover,  his  voice 
is  only  allowed  to  use  a  part  even  of  this  imperfect  imitative 
power,  seeing  that  each  language  for  its  own  convenience  re- 
stricts it  to  a  small  number  of  set  vowels  and  consonants,  to 
which  the  imitative  sounds  have  to  conform,  thus  becoming 
conventionalized  into  articulate  words  with  further  loss  of 
imitative  accuracy.  No  class  of  words  have  a  more  perfect 
imitative  origin  than  those  which  simply  profess  to  be  vocal 
imitations  of  sound.  How  ordinary  aljihabets  to  some 
extent  succeed  and  to  some  extentfail  in  writing  down  these 
sounds  may  be  judged  from  a  few  examples.  Thus,  the 
Australian  imitation  of  a  spejir  or  bullet  striking  is  given  as 
toop ;  to  the  Zulu,  when  a  calabash  is  beaten,  it  says  boo ; 
the  Karens  hear  the  flitting  ghosts  of  the  dead  call  in  the 
wailing  voice  of  the  wind,  re  re,  ro  ro ;  the  old  traveller, 
Pietro  della  Valle,  tells  how  the  Shah  of  Persia  sneered  at 
Tinuir  and  his  Tatars,  with  their  arrows  that  went  ter  ter  ; 
certain  Buddhist  heretics  maintained  that  water  is  alive, 
because  when  it  boils  it  says  chiddtd,  chitichita,  a  symptom 
of  vitality  which  occasioned  much  theological  controversy  as 
to  drinking  cold  and  warm  water.  Lastlj^  sound-words 
taken  up  into  the  general  inventory  of  a  language  have  to 
follow  its  organic  changes,  and  in  the  course  of  phonetic 
transition,  combination,  decay,  and  mutilation,  to  lose  ever 
more  and  more  their  original  shape.  To  take  a  singlie 
example,  the  French  huer  **  to  shout "  (Welsh  hiva)  may  be 
a  perfect  imitative  verb ;  yet  when  it  passes  into  modern 


:L1 

r 


.;.'! 


202 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


u 


English   hue   and   cry,  our  changed  pronunciation   of  the 
vowel   destroys    all    imitation    of  the   call.     Now  to   the 
language-makers   all    this    was    of   little    account.     They 
merely   wanted    recognized  words   to   express   recognized 
thoughts,  and  no  doubt  arrived  by  repeated  trials  at  systems 
which  were  found  practically  to  answer  this  purpose.     But 
to  the  modern  philoloirist,  who  is  attempting  to  work  out 
the  converse  of  the  problem,  and  to  follow  backward  the  course 
of  words  to  original  imitative  sound,  the  difficulty  is  most 
embarrassing.     It  is  not  only  that  thousands  of  words  really 
derived  from  such  imitation  may  now  by  successive  change 
have    lost    all    safe    traces    of  their   history;    such   mere 
deficiency  of  knowledge  is  only  a  minor  evil.     What  is  far 
worse  is  that  the  way   is   thrown   open   to   an   unlimited 
number  of  false  solutions,  which  yet  look  on  the  face  of 
them  fully  as  like  truth  as  others  which  we  know  historically 
to  be  true.     One  thing  is  clear,  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  resort 
to  violent  means,  to  rush  in  among  the  words  of  language, 
explaining  them  away  right  and  left  as  derived  each  from 
some  remote  application  of  an  imitative  noise.     The  advo- 
cate of  the  Imitative  Theory  who  attempts  this,  trusting  in 
his  own  powers  of  discernment,  has  indeed  taken  in  hand  a 
perilous  task,  for,  in  fact,  of  all  judges  of  the  question  a* 
issue,  he  has  nourished  and  trained  himself  up  to  become  the 
very  worst.      His    imagination  is  ever   suggesting  to  him 
what  his  judgment  would  like  to  find  true ;  like  a  witness 
answering  the  questions  of  the  counsel  on  his  own  side,  he 
answers  in  good  faith,   but  with   what   bias   we  all  know. 
It  was  thus  with  De  Brosses,  to  whom  this  department  of 
philology  owes  so  much.     It  is  nothing  to  say  that  he  had 
a  keen  ear  for  the  voice  of  Nature  ;  she  must  have  positively 
talked  to  him  in  alphabetic  language,  for  he  could  hear  the 
sound  of  hollowness  in   the   sk   of  a-KcnrTio  "  to   dig,"    of 
hardness  in  the  cal  of  callosity,  the  noise  of  insertion  cf  a 
body  between  two  others   in  the    tr   of  trans,   intra.     Ir 
enquiries  so  liable  to  misleading  fancy,  no  pains  should  be 
spared  in  securing  impartial  testimony,  and  it  fortunately 


'  :    ■   '-j  ', 


r«| 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


2(i:} 


lud  a 
ion  a* 
tne  the 
o  him 
itness 
de,  he 
know, 
lent  of 
he  had 
sitively 
ar  the 

n  cf  a 
a.  Ir 
uld  he 
unately 


happens  that  there  are  available  sources  of  such  evidence, 
which,  when  thoroughly  worked,  will  give  to  the  theory  of 
imitative  words  as  near  an  approach  to  accuracy  as  has  been 
attained  to  in  any  other  wide  philological  problem.  By 
comparing  a  number  of  languages,  widely  apart  in  their 
general  system  and  materials,  and  whose  agreement 
as  to  the  words  in  question  can  only  be  accounted  for  by 
similar  formation  of  words  from  similar  suggestion  of  sound, 
we  obtain  groups  of  words  whose  imitative  character  is  in- 
disputable. The  groups  here  considered  consist  in  general 
of  imitative  words  of  the  simpler  kind,  those  directly  con- 
nected with  the  special  sound  they  are  taken  from,  but  their 
examination  to  some  extent  admits  of  words  being  brought 
in,  where  the  connexion  of  the  idea  expressed  with  the 
sound  imitated  is  more  remote.  This,  lastly,  opens  the  far 
wider  and  more  difficult  problem,  how  far  imitation  of 
sounds  is  the  primary  cause  of  the  great  mass  of  words  in 
the  vocabularies  of  the  world,  between  whose  sound  and  sense 
no  direct  connexion  exists. 

Words  which  express  human  actions  accompanied  with 
sound  form  a  very  large  and  intelligible  class.  In  remote 
and  most  different  languages,  we  find  such  forms  as  pu,  puf, 
bu,  hiif,fu,fnf,  in  use  with  the  meaning  oi puffing ,  fuffing ,  or 
blowing;  Malay  jmpwi;  Tongan  hulii ;  ISIaqvi  pupid ;  Aus- 
tralian /  ohun,  hwa-hmi ;  Galla  bufa,  afvfa  ;  Zulu  fata,  piinga, 
pupuza  {fit,  pu,  used  as  expressive  particles) ;  Quiche  piiba; 
Quichua  pukuni ;  Tupi  ypcu ;  Finnish  puhkia ;  Hebrew 
punch ;  Danish  puste  ;  Lithuanian  puciu ;  and  in  numbers 
of  other  languages;^  here,  grammatical  adjuncts  apart,  the 
significant  force  lies  in  the  imitative  syllable.  Savages  have 
named  the  European  musket  when  they  saw  it,  by  the  sound 
pi(,  describing  not  the  report  but  the  puff  of  smoke  issuing 
from  the  muzzle.  The  Society  Islanders  supposed  at  first 
that  the  white  men  blew  through  the  barrel  of  the  gun,  and 
they  culled  it  accordingly  pupuhi,  from  the  verb  puhi  to 

'  MpoTi<,'\ve  puvjina ;  Rasuto  /oka ;  Carib  phouhdr ;  Arawac  appUdiln 
(igiiem  suillaro).     Other  cases  are  given  by  Wedgwood,  'Or.  of  Lang.'  p.  83. 


vi! 


If 


204 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE, 


i 


f: 


'I  I 


•I 


blow,  while  the  New  Zealanders  more  simplj'  called  it  a  pu. 
So  the  Amaxosa  of  South  Africa  call  it  umpu,  from  the 
imitative  sound  pu  !  The  Chinook  Jargon  of  North  "West 
America  uses  the  phrase  mamook  poo  (make  poo)  for  a  verb 
**  to  shoot,"  and  a  six-chambered  revolver  is  called  tohum 
poo,  i.  e.,  a  "  six-poo."  When  a  European  uses  the  word 
puff  to  denote  the  discharge  of  a  gun,  he  is  merely  using  the 
same  imitative  word  for  blowing  which  describes  a  p/z/T  of 
wind,  or  even  a  \)o\\der-piiff  or  a  ^^//^-ball ;  and  when  a  pistol 
is  called  in  colloquial  German  a  puffer,  the  meaning  of  the 
word  matches  that  used  for  it  in  French  Argot,  a 
"  soufflant."  It  has  often  been  supposed  that  the  piff 
imitates  the  actual  sound,  the  hang  of  the  gun,  and  this  has 
been  brought  forward  to  show  by  what  extremely  different 
words  one  and  the  same  sound  may  be  imitated,  but  this  is 
a  mistake.^  These  derivations  of  the  name  of  the  gun  from 
the  notion  of  blowing  correspond  with  those  which  give 
names  to  the  comparatively  noiseless  blow-tube  of  the  bird- 
hunter,  called  by  the  Indians  oi  Yucatan  a  puJ>,  in  South 
America  by  the  Chiqnitos  a  pticuna,  by  the  Cocamas  a  pu- 
na. Looking  into  vocabularies  of  languages  which  have 
such  verbs  "  to  blow,"  it  is  usual  to  find  with  them  other 
words  apparently  related  to  them,  and  expressing  more  or 
less  distant  ideas.  Thus  AvLsiYalian poo-yi( , piiya  "smoke;" 
Quichua  jnihucuni  "  to  light  a  fire,"  jniuqu'ini  "  to  swell," 
piiyu,  piihuyii  **  a  cloud  ;  "  Maori  p^iku  "  to  pant,"  puka 
"  to  swell ;  "  Tupi  pilpu,  pup/'/rc  "  to  boil ;  "  Galla  hiihe 
"wind,"  buh'iza  "to  cool  b}'  blowing;"  Kanuri  (root //t) 
funfjm  "  to  blow,  swell," /'«;7'^(/u  "  a  stuffed  pad  or  bolster," 
etc.,  biihute  "  bellows  "  {hulnite  fnngin  "  I  blow  the 
bellows ")  ;  Zulu  (dropping  the  prelixes)  pukii,  pukupn 
"  frotliing,  foam,"  whence  p^ikiiptikii,  "  an  empty  frothy 
fellow,"  pupuma  "  to  bubble,  boil,"  fit  **  a  cloud,"  fiuiiju 
"  blown  about  like  liigli  grass  in  the  wind,"  whence  fumfuta 
*'  to  be  confused,  thrown  into  disorder," /w^o  "  bellows,"/u6a 
**  the  breast,  chest,"  then  figuratively  "  bosom,  conscience." 

'  See  Wedgwood,  'Die'  liitrod.  p.  viiL 


EilOTlONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


205 


,  a  pu. 

m  the 

1  West 
a  verb 
tohum 

e  word 

ling  the 

,  jriiff  of 

a  pistol 

g  of  the 

.rgot,    a 

;he  2?"/ 

this  has 

difterent 

it  this  is 

fun  from 

lich  give 

the  bird- 

n  South 

las  a  pu- 
ich  have 
m  other 
more  or 
smoke ; " 
o  swell," 
it,"  pH'ka 
alia  hiihe 
(root  ffi) 
bolster," 
ilow    the 
■piikupn 
,ty  frothy 

e  fumfuta 

,ws,".M« 
Lscience." 


The  gioup  of  words  belonging  to  the  closed  lips,  of  which 
mum,  mumming,  mumble  are  among  the  many  forms  belong- 
ing to  European  languages,^  are  worked  out  in  like  manner 
among  the  lower  races — Vei  mu  mu  "  dumb  "  ;  Mpongwe 
imamu  "  dumb  "  ;  Zulu  momata  (from  moma,  **  a  motion 
with  the  mouth  as  in  mumbling  ")  "to  move  the  mouth  or 
lips,"  mumata  "to  close  the  lips  as  with  a  mouthful  of 
water,"  luumata,  mumuza  "  to  eat  mouthfuls  of  corn,  etc., 
with  the  lips  shut;  "  Tahitian  mamu  "to  be  silent,"  omumn 
"  to  murmur  ;  "  Fijian,  nomo,  nomo-nomo  "  to  be  silent ;  " 
Chilian,  nomn  "  to  be  silent ; "  Quiche,  mem  "  mute," 
whence  meiiier  "to  become  mute;  "  Quichua,  amii  "  dumb, 
silent,"  amidlini  "  to  have  something  in  the  mouth,"  amiil- 
layacuni  simicta  "to  mutter,  to  grumble."  The  group 
represented  by  Sanskrit  t'hiit'hii  "  the  sound  of  spitting," 
Persian  tJm  kerdan  (make  thu)  "  to  spit,"  Greek  tttvo),  may 
be  compared  with  Chinook  mamook  toJi,  took,  (make  tok, 
took) ;  Chilian  tuvcutun  (make  tuv) :  Tahitian  tutiui ;  Galla 
tivu ;  Yoruba  tu.  Among  the  Sanskrit  verb-roots,  none 
carries  its  imitative  nature  more  plainly  than  kshii  "  to 
sneeze  ; "  the  following  analogous  forms  are  from  South 
America  : — Chilian,  ecJiiun  ;  Quichua,  achhini ;  and  from 
various  languages  of  Brazilian  tribes,  teeha-ai,  haitschu, 
atchian,  natscJiun,  aritischune,  etc.  Another  imitative  verb 
is  well  shown  in  the  Negro-English  dialect  of  Surinam, 
njam  "  to  eat  "  (pron.  iiyam),  njaiii-njam  "  food  "  ("  en  hem 
njanjam  ben  de  sprinkhan  nanga  boesi-honi " — "  and  his 
meat  was  locusts  and  wild  honey").  In  Australia  the 
imitative  verb  "to  eat"  re-appears  as  g^nam-ang.  In  Africa, 
the  Susu  language  has  nimiiim,  "  to  taste,"  and  a  similar 
formaticii  is  observed  in  the  Zulu  namhita  "  to  smack  the 
lips  after  eating  or  tasting,  and  thence  to  be  tasteful,  to  be 
pleasant  to  the  mind."  This  is  an  excellent  instance  of  the 
transition  of  mere  imitative  sound  to  the  expression  of 
mental  emotion,  and  it  corresponds  with  the  imitative  way 
in  which  the  Yakama  language,  in  speaking  of  little  children 

'  See  Wedgwood,  Die,  s.  v.  •'mum,''  etc. 


\r~.. 


."  >  T^rroi^stuTi.-iK.jr-Ji'*—^..  »*»~»wi«4j 


206 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


I  I 


■/'  (IS 


*! 


fl 


i 


i 


or  pet  animals,  expresses  the  verb  "to  love'*  as  nem-no-sha 
(to  make  n'm-n).  In  more  civilized  countries  these  forma 
are  mostly  confined  to  baby-language.  The  Chinese  child's 
word  for  eating  is  nam,  in  P^nglish  nurseries  nim  is  noticed 
as  answering  the  same  purpose,  and  the  Swedish  dictionary 
even  recognizes  mnnnam  "  a  tid-bit." 

As  for  imitative  names  of  animals  derived  from  their  cries 
or  noises,  they  are  to  be  met  with  in  every  language,  from 
the  Australian  twonk  "  frog,"  the  Yakama  rol-rol  "  lark,"  to 
the  Coptic  eeid  "ass,"  the  Chinese  maou  "cat,"  and  the 
English  cuckoo  and  pec  ait.  Their  general  principle  of 
formation  being  acknowledged,  their  further  philological 
interest  turns  mostly  on.  cases  where  corresponding  words 
have  thus  been  formed  independently  in  distant  regions, 
and  those  where  the  imitative  name  of  the  creature,  or  its 
habitual  sound,  passes  to  express  some  new  idea  suggested 
by  its  character.  The  Sanskrit  name  of  the  kdka  crow  re- 
appears in  the  name  of  a  similar  bird  in  British  Columbia, 
the  kdh'kah ;  a  fly  is  called  by  the  natives  of  Australia  a 
humberoo,  like  Sanskrit  hamhliardli  "a fly,"  Greek  j3onj3u\ios, 
and  our  bumblchee.  Analogous  to  the  name  of  the  tse-tse, 
the  terror  of  African  travellers,  is  ntsintsi,  the  word  for  "  a 
fly  "  among  the  Basutos,  which  also,  by  a  simple  metaphor, 
serves  to  express  the  idea  of  "a  parasite."  Mr.  H.  W. 
Bates's  description  seems  to  settle  the  dispute  among  natu- 
ralists, whether  the  toucan  had  its  name  from  its  cry  or 
not.  He  speaks  of  its  loud,  i=hiill,  j'elping  cries  having  "a 
vague  resemblance  to  the  syllables  tocdno,  tocdno,  and  hence 
the  Indian  name  of  this  genus  of  birds."  Granting  this, 
we  can  trace  this  sound-word  into  a  very  new  meaning ;  for 
it  appears  that  the  bird's  monstrous  bill  has  suggested  a 
name  for  a  certain  large-nosed  tribe  of  Indians,  who  are 
accordingly  called  the  Tucanos.^  The  cock,  gallo  quiqui- 
riqui,  as  the  Spanish  nursery-languige  calls  him,  has  a  long 
list  of  names  from  various  languages  which  in  various  ways 


V: 


'  Bates,  '  Naturalist  on  the  Amazons,'  2nd  ed.,  p.  404  ;  Markham  in  '  Tr. 
Eth.  Soc.,'to1.  iii.  p.  143. 


if 


EMOTIONAL    AND    BIITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


20'; 


imitate  his  crowing ;  in  Yoruba  he  is  called  koldo,  in  ILo 
okoko,  akoka,  in  Zulu  kukii,  in  Finnish  kukko,  in  Sanskrit 
kukkuta,  and  so  on.  He  is  mentioned  in  the  Zend-Avesta 
in  a  very  curious  way,  by  a  name  which  elaborately  imitates 
his  cr}',  but  which  the  ancient  Persians  seem  to  have  held 
disrespectful  to  their  holy  bird,  who  rouses  men  from  sleep 
to  good  thought,  word,  and  work  : — 

"  The  bird  who  bears  the  name  of  Parodars,  0  holy  Zarathustra ; 
Upon  whom  evil-speaking  men  impose  the  name  Kahrkatag."  * 


The  crowing  of  the  cock  (Malay  kdluruk,  kukuk)  serves  to 
mark  a  point  of  time,  cockcrow.  Other  words  originally 
derived  from  such  imitation  of  crowing  have  passed  into 
other  curiously  transformed  meanings ;  Old  French  cocart 
"  vain ;  "  modern  French  coquet  "  strutting  like  a  cock, 
coquetting,  a  coxcomb ;  "  cocarde  "  a  cockade  "  (from  its 
likeness  to  a  cock's  comb) ;  one  of  the  best  instances  is 
coquelicot,  a  name  given  for  the  same  reason  to  the  wild 
poppy,  and  even  more  distinctly  in  Languedoc,  where 
cacaracd  means  both  the  crowing  and  the  flower.  The  hen 
in  some  languages  has  a  name  corresponding  to  that  of  the 
cock,  as  in  Kussa  kukuduna  "cock,"  knkukasi  "  hen;"  Ewe 
koklo-tsu  **  cock,"  koklo-no  "hen  ;  "  and  her  cackle  (whence 
she  has  in  Switzerland  the  name  of  gxgel,  giicjgcl)  has  j)assed 
into  language  as  a  term  for  idle  gossip  and  chatter  of 
women,  caqiiet,  caqueter,  gackern,  much  as  the  noise  of  a 
very  different  creature  seems  to  have  given  rise  not  only  to 
its  name,  Italian  cicala,  but  to  a  group  of  words  represented 
by  cicalar  "  to  chirp,  chatter,  talk  sillily."  The  pigeon  is  a 
good  example  of  this  kind,  both  for  sound  and  sense.  It  is 
Latin  'p'rpio,  Italian  pipp'wne,  piccione,  jngione,  modern 
Greek  ttlttiviov,  French  pipion  (old),  pigeon ,-  its  derivation 
is  from  the  young  bird's  peep,  Latin  pipire,  Italian  pipiare, 
pigiolare,  modern  Greek  ininviCo,  to  chirp ;  by  an  easy 
metaphor,  a  pigeon  comes  to  mean  "  a  silly  young  fellow 

*  'Avesta,'  Farg.  xviii.  34-5. 


208 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAQE. 


easily  caught,"  to  pigeon  "to  cheat,"  Italian  p'qnone  "a  silly 
gull,  one  that  is  soon  caught  and  trepanned,"  pippionair 
**  to  pigeon,  to  gull  one."  In  an  entirely  different  family  of 
languages,  Mr.  Wedgwood  points  out  a  curiously  similar 
process  of  derivation  ;  Mngyar  pipcfjni,  pipelni  "to  peep  or 
cheep;"  pipe,  pipok  "a  chicken,  gosling;"  pipe-emher 
(chicken-man),  "  a  silly  young  fellow,  booby."^  The  deri- 
vation of  Greek  ^ois,  Latin  hoa,  Welsh  hu,  from  the  ox's 
lowing,  or  booing  as  it  is  called  in  the  north  country,  has 
been  much  debated.  With  an  excessive  desire  to  make 
Sanskrit  answei  as  a  general  Indo-European  type,  Bopp 
connected  Sanskrit  go,  old  German  chuo,  English  cow,  with 
these  words,  on  the  unusual  and  forced  assumption  of  a 
change  from  guttural  to  labial.^  The  direct  derivation  from 
sound,  however,  is  favoured  by  other  languages,  Cochin- 
Chinese  ho,  Hottentot  hou.  The  beast  may  almost  answer 
for  himself  in  the  words  of  that  Spanish  proverb  which 
remarks  that  people  talk  according  to  their  nature  : 
"  Hablo  el  hiiey,  y  dijo  6m/  "  "  The  ox  spoke,  and  he  said 
boo!" 

Among  musical  instruments  with  imitative  names  are  the 
following  : — the  sJiee-shee-qnoi,  the  mystic  rattle  of  the  Red 
Indian  medicine-man,  an  imitative  word  which  re-appears 
in  the  Darien  Indian  shak-sJiak,  the  shook-shook  of  the 
Arawaks,  the  Chinook  shugh  (whence  shugh-opouts,  rattle- 
tail,  i.  e.,  "  rattlesnake  ;  ") — the  drum,  called  ganga  in 
Haussa,  ganga n  in  the  Yoruba  country,  gunguma  by  the 
Gallas,  and  having  its  analogue  in  the  Eastern  gong ; — the 
bell,  called  in  Yakama  (N.  Amer.)  kwalal-kwa-lm ,  in  Yalof 
(W.  Afr.)  ivalwal,  in  Russian  kolokol.  The  sound  of  the 
horn  is  imitated  in  English  nurseries  as  toot-toot,  and  tliis  is 
transferred  to  express  the  "omnibus"  of  which  tlie  ^  v^le  is 
the  signs  1 :  with  tliis  nursery  word  is   to  be  clasbed  the 


; 


>  Wedgwood,  Die,  s.  v.  "pigeon  ;"  Diez.  'Etym.  Wortorb. , '  a.  v,  "pic- 


Clone. 


-  l')opp,   'Gloss.  Sanscr.,'  s.  v.   "go."     See  Pott,  '  Wurzel-Wbrterb.  der 
liido-Gurni.  Spr.,'8.  v.  "gu,"  Zalilmeth.,  p.  227. 


El  silly 
lonarr 
lily  cf 
imilar 
eep  or 
-ember 
5  deri- 
le  ox's 
L-y,  has 
i  make 
,  Bopp 
V,  with 
n  of  a 
m  from 
3ochin- 
answer 
1  which 
aature  : 
he  said 

are  the 
lie  Red 
[ippeavs 
of  the 
rattle - 
iga    in 
by  the 
; — the 
Yalof 
of  the 
this  is 
r^*le  is 
led  the 

|v.  "pic- 
Urb.  der 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


20l> 


Peruvian  name  for  the  "  shell-trumpet,"  pututu,  and  the 
Gothic  thuthaurn  (thut-horn),  which  is  even  used  in  the 
Gothic  Bible  for  the  last  trumpet  of  the  day  of  judgment, — 
"  In  spedistin  thuthaurna.  thuthaurneith  auk  jah  daiithans 
ustandand "  (1  Cor.  xv.  52).  How  such  imitative  words, 
when  thoroughly  taken  up  into  language,  suifer  change  of 
pronunciation  in  which  the  original  sound-meaning  is  lost, 
may  be  seen  in  the  English  word  tabor,  which  we  might  not 
recognize  as  a  sound-word  at  all,  did  we  not  notice  that  it  is 
French  labour,  a  word  which  in  the  form  taviboar  obviously 
belongs  to  a  group  of  words  for  drums,  extending  from  the 
small  rattling  Arabic  tiibl  to  the  Indian  dundJiubi  and  the 
tombe,  the  Moqui  drum  made  of  a  hollowed  log.  The  same 
group  shows  the  transfer  of  such  imitative  words  to  objects 
wliich  are  like  the  instrument,  but  have  nothing  to  do  with 
its  sound;  few  people  who  talk  of  tainhoiir-work,  and  fewer 
still  who  speak  of  a  footstool  as  a  tahouret,  associate  these 
words  with  the  sound  of  a  drum,  yet  the  connexion  is  clear 
enough.  "When  these  two  jirocesses  go  on  together,  and  a 
sound-word  changes  its  original  sound  on  the  one  hand, 
and  transfers  its  meaning  to  something  else  on  the  otlier, 
the  result  maj''  soon  leave  philological  analysis  quite  help- 
less, unless  by  accident  historical  evidence  is  forthcoming. 
Thus  with  the  English  word  pipe.  Putting  aside  the 
particular  pronunciation  which  we  give  the  word,  and  re- 
ferring it  back  to  its  French  or  mediseval  Latin  sound  in 
pipe,  p'lpa,  we  have  before  us  an  evident  imitative  name  of  a 
musical  instrument,  derived  from  a  familiar  sound  used 
also  to  represent  the  chii'ping  of  chickens,  Latin  pipirc, 
English  to  peep,  as  in  the  translation  of  Isaiah  viii.  19  : 
"  Seek  .  .  .  unto  wizards  that  p(!ep,  and  that  mutter." 
The  Algonquin  Indians  appear  to  have  formed  from  this 
sound  pib  (with  a  grammatical  suffix)  their  name  for  the 
plb-e-gwun  or  native  flute.  Now  just  as  tuba,  tubus,  "  a 
trumpet"  (itself  very  likely  an  imitative  word)  has  given  a 
name  for  any  kind  of  tube,  so  the  word  pipe  has  been  trans- 
ferred  from  the  musical  instrument  to  which  it  first  bt- 

VOI>.    I.  !■ 


*  1 '  I 


210 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


longed,  and  is  used  to  describe  tubes  of  various  sorts,  gaa* 
pipes,  water-pipes,  and  pipes  in  general.  There  is  nothing 
unusual  in  these  transitions  of  meaning,  which  are  in  fact 
rather  the  rule  than  the  exception.  The  chibouk  was  origi- 
nally a  herdsman's  pipe  or  flute  in  Central  Asia.  The 
ralumet,  popularly  ranked  with  the  tomahawk  and  the 
mocassin  among  characteristic  Red  Indian  words,  is  only 
the  name  for  a  shepherd's  pipe  (Latin  cnlarmis)  in  the  dialect 
of  Normandy,  corresponding  with  the  chalumeau  of  literary 
French  ;  for  when  the  early  colonists  in  Canada  saw  the 
Indians  performing  the  strange  operation  of  smoking, 
"  with  a  hollow  piece  of  stone  or  wood  like  a  pipe,"  as 
Jacques  Cartier  has  it,  they  merely  gave  to  the  native 
tobacco-pipe  the  name  of  the  French  musical  instrument  it 
resembled.  Now  changes  of  sound  and  of  sense  like  this  of 
the  English  word  pipe  must  have  been  in  continual  opera- 
tion in  hundreds  of  languages  where  we  have  no  evidence  to 
follow  them  by,  and  where  we  probably  may  never  obtain 
such  evidence.  But  what  little  we  do  know  must  compel  us 
to  do  justice  to  the  imitation  of  sound  as  a  really  existing 
process,  capable  of  furnishing  an  indefinitely  large  suppl}'  of 
words  for  thmgs  and  actions  which  have  no  necessary 
connexion  at  all  with  that  sound.  Where  the  traces  of  the 
transfer  are  lost,  the  result  is  a  stock  of  words  which  are 
the  despair  of  philologists,  but  are  perhaps  none  the  less 
fitted  for  the  practical  use  of  men  who  simply  want  recog- 
nized symbols  for  recognized  ideas. 

The  claim  of  the  Eastern  tomtom  to  have  its  name  from  a 
mere  imitation  of  its  sound  seems  an  indisputable  one  ;  but 
when  we  notice  in  what  various  languages  the  beating  of  a 
resounding  object  is  expressed  by  something  like  turn,  tiunb, 
tump,  tup,  as  in  Javan  tumhuk,  Coptic  tmno,  "  to  pound  in  a 
mortar,"  it  becomes  evident  that  the  admission  involves 
more  than  at  first  sight  appears.  In  Malay,  timpa,  tautpa, 
is  "  to  beat  out,  hammer,  forge ;  "  in  the  Chinook  Jargon 
tum-tum  is  "  the  heart,"  and  by  combining  the  same  sound 
with   the    English   word    "  water,"   a    name   is  made   for 


I 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGU>     " 


211 


ts,  gna- 
lotliing 
in  fact 
s  origi- 
.  Tlie 
id  the 
is  only 
dialect 
literary 
5aw  the 
noking, 
pe,"   as 

native 
ment  it 
i  this  of 
1  opera- 
lence  to 
|-  obtain 

ipel  us 
existing 

iply  ot 
icessary 

of  the 
ich  are 
ne  less 


recog- 


from  a 
but 
g  of  a 

,  tanih, 
id  in  a 
volves 
ta  lupa, 
r argon 
sound 
le   for 


e 


; 


"  waterfall,"  tum-icdta.     The  Gallas  of  East  Africa  declare 
that  a  box  on  the  ear  seems  to  them  to  make  a  noise  like 
tub,  for  the}'  call  its  sound  tubdjcda,  that  is,  "  to  say  tub." 
In  the  same  language,  tuma  is  "to  beat,"  whence  tumtu,  "a 
workman,  especially  one  who  beats,  a  smith."     With  the 
aid  of  another  imitative  word,  biifa  "to  blow,"  the  Gallas 
can  construct  this  wholly  imitative  sentence,  tumtuin  bit/a 
biifti,   "  the  workman  blows  the  bellows,"   as  an  English 
child   might   say,    "  the   tunitum  puffs   the   puffer.''^     Tliis 
imitative  sound  seems  to  have  obtained  a  footing  among  the 
Aryan  verb-roots,  as  in  Sanskrit  tup,  tubh  "  to  smite,"  while 
in   Greek,  tup,   tump,  has   the   meaning   of   "  to    beat,    to 
thump,"   producing  for  instance  rvfrnavov,  tjjmpanum,    "  a 
drum  or  tomtom."     Again,  the  verb  to  crack  has  become  in 
modern  English  as  thorough  a  root-word  as  the  language 
possesses.     The  mere  imitation  of  the  sound  of  breaking 
has  passed  into  a  verb  to  break ;  we  speak  of  a  cracked  cup 
or  a  cracked  reputation  without  a  thought  of  imitation  of 
sound ;    but  we  cannot  yet   use   the   German   krachen   or 
French  craqucr  in  this  way,  for  they  have  not  developed  in 
meaning  as  our  word  has,  but  remain  in  their  purely  imita- 
tive stage.     There  are  two  corresponding  Sanskrit  words 
for  the  saw,  kra-kara,  kra-kacha,  that  is  to  say,  the  "  kra- 
maker,  fcra-crier ;  "  and  it  is  to  be  observed  that  all  such 
terms,   which  expressly  state  that   they  are  imitations  of 
sound,  are  particularly  valuable  evidence  in  these  enquiries, 
for  whatever  doubt  there  may  be  as  to  other  words  being 
really  derived  from  imitated  sound,  there  can,  of  course,  be 
none  here.      Moreover,  there  is  evidence  of  the  same  sound 
having  given  rise  to  imitative  words  in  other  fiimilies  of 
language,  Dahoman  kra-kra,  **  a  watchman's  rattle;"  Grebo 
(jrlkd   "a  saw;"  kmo  chacha   "to  saw;"  Malay  ^ny"i  "  a 
saw,"  karat  "  to  gnash  the  teeth,"  karat  "  to  make  a  [/rating 
noise ; "  Coptic  klirij  "  to  gnash  the  teeth,"  khrajrej  "  to 
grate."     Another  form   of  the   imitation  is   given  in   the 
descriptive    Galla    expression    cncakdjeda,   i.  e.,    "to    say 
cacak"  "  to  crack,  krachen."     With  this  sound  corresponds 

P  2 


if 


'vk 


i    .i" 


'W 


I'' 


212 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


a  whole  family  of  Peruvian  words,  of  which  the  root  seeing 
to  he  the  guttural  cca,  coming  from  far  hack  in  the  throat ; 
ccallani,  **  to  break,"  ccatatani,  **  to  gnash  the  teeth," 
ccacniy,  "  thunder,"  and  the  expressive  word  for  "  a  thun- 
der-storm," ccaccaccahay,  which  carries  the  imitative  process 
so  much  farther  than  such  European  words  as  thunder-cZap, 
AonneY-klnjif.  In  Maori,  pata  is  "to  'patter  as  water  drop- 
ping, drops  of  rain."  The  Manchu  language  describes  the 
noise  of  fruits  falling  from  the  trees  as  pata  pata  (so  Hindu- 
stani hhndbliad);  this  is  like  our  word  pat,  and  we  should 
say  in  the  same  manner  that  the  fruit  comes  pattering 
down,  while  French  patatra  is  a  recognized  imil;  tion  of 
something  falling.  Coptic  potpt  is  "to  fall,"  and  the 
Australian  hadhadin  (or  patpatin)  is  translated  into  almost 
literal  English  as  pitpattimj.  On  the  strength  of  such  non- 
Aryan  languages,  are  we  to  assign  an  imitative  origin 
to   the    Sanskrit  verb-root  pat,   "to   fall,"  and  to  Greek 

Wishing  rather  to  gain  a  clear  survej  "^f  the  principles  of 
language-making  than  to  plunge  into  obscure  problems,  it  is 
not  necessary  for  me  to  discuss  here  questions  of  intricate 
detail.  The  point  which  continual!}'  arises  is  this, — granted 
that  a  particular  kind  of  transition  from  sound  to  sense  is 
possible  in  the  abstract,  may  it  be  safel}'  claimed  in  a  parti- 
cular case  ?  In  looking  through  the  vocabularies  of  the 
world,  it  appears  that  most  languages  offer  words  which,  by 
obvious  likeliness  or  by  their  correspondence  with  similar 
forms  elsewhere,  may  put  forward  a  tolerable  claim  to  be 
considered  imitative.  Some  languages,  as  Aztec  or 
Mohawk,  offer  singularly'  few  examples,  while  in  others 
they  are  much  more  numerous.  Take  Australian  cases  : 
iralle,  "to  wail;"  hung -hung -ween,  "thunder;"  wirriti,  "to 
blow,  as  wind;"  tcirrirriti,  "to  storm,  rage,  as  in  fight;" 
loirri,  hwirri,  "  the  native  throwing  stick,"  seemingly  so 
called  from  its  whir  through  the  air  ;  kurarriti,  "  to  hum, 
buzz  ;  "  kurrirnirriri,  "  round  about,  unintelligible,"  etc. ; 
pitata,  "to  knock,  pelt,  as  rain,"  pitapitata,  "to  knock;" 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


2U 


wiiti,  "  to  laugh,  rejoice  *' — just  as  in  our  own  *'  Turnament 
of  Tottenham  ":— 

"  •  We  te  he  !  '  quoth  Tyb,  and  lugh, 
'  Ye  er  a  dughty  man  I '  " 

The  so-called  Chinook  jargon  of  British  Columhia  is  a  lan- 
guage crowded  with  imitative  words,  sometimes  adopted 
from  the  native  Indian  languages,  sometimes  made  on  the 
spot  by  the  combined  efforts  of  the  white  man  and  the 
Indian  to  make  one  another  understand.  Samples  of  its 
qualit}' are /i6/i-/io/t,  "to  cough,"  ko-ko,  '*  to  knock,"  kica- 
laV -ktva-lal,  "to  gallop,"  muck-a-muck,  "to  eat,"  chak-chak, 
**  the  bald  eagle  "  (from  its  scream),  tsish,  "  a  grindstone," 
mamook  tsish  (make  ts'isJi),  "  to  shari)en."  It  has  been 
remarked  by  Prof.  Max  Mliller  that  the  peculiar  sound 
made  in  blowing  out  a  candle  is  not  a  favourite  in  civilized 
languages,  but  it  seems  to  be  recognized  here,  for  no  doubt 
it  is  what  the  compiler  of  the  vocabulary  is  doing  his  best 
to  write  down  when  he  gives  mamook  poll  (make?  poh)  as  the 
Chinook  expression  for  "to  blow  out  or  extinguish  as  a 
candle."  This  jargon  is  in  great  measure  of  new  growth 
within  the  last  seventy  or  eight}"^  years,  but  its  imitative 
words  do  not  differ  in  nature  from  those  of  the  more 
ordinary  and  old-established  languages  of  the  world.  Thus 
among  Brazilian  tribes  there  appear  Tupi  cororong,  cururuc, 
"to  snore"  (compare  Coptic  kherkher,  Quichua  ccorctuii 
(ccor) ),  whence  it  appears  that  an  imitation  of  a  snore  may 
perhaps  serve  the  Carajas  Indians  to  express  "to  sleep" 
arourou-cr^,  as  well  as  the  related  idea  of  "night,"  roon. 
Again  Pimenteira  ehaung,  "  to  bruise,  beat,"  compares  with 
Yoruba  gba,  "to  slap,"  ghd  (gbang)  "to  sound  loudly,  to 
hang"  and  so  forth.  Among  African  languages,  the  Zulu 
seems  particularly  rich  in  imitative  words.  Thus  bihiza, 
"  to  dribble  like  children,  drivel  in  speaking "  (compare 
English  bib) ;  babala,  "  the  larger  bush-antelope  "  (from  the 
baa  of  the  female)  ;  boha,  "  to  babble,  chatter,  be  noisy." 
bohi,  "  a  babbler ;  "  boboni,  "  a  throstle  "  (cries  bo!  bo!  cora- 


(  ! 


,1 


214 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


pare  American  bobolink) ;  bomholoza,  "  to  rumble  in  the 
bowels,  to  have  a  bowel-complaint;  "  bubula,  "to  buzz  lil;e 
bees,"  bnbidela,  **  a  swarm  of  bees,  a  buzzinj^  crowd  of 
people  ; "  buhuluzd,  *'  to  make  a  blustering  noiso,  like  froth- 
ing beer  or  boiling  fat."  These  examples,  from  among 
those  given  under  one  initial  letter  in  one  dictionary  of  one 
barbaric  language,  maj'  give  an  idea  of  the  amount  of  the 
evidence  from  the  languages  of  the  lower  races  bearing  on 
the  present  problem. 

For  the  present  purpose  of  giving  a  brief  series  of  ex- 
amples of  the  sort  of  words  in  which  imitative  sound  seems 
fairly  traceable,  the  strongest  and  most  manageable  evidence 
is  of  course  found  among  such  words  as  directly  describe 
sounds  or  what  produces  them,  such  as  sounds  of  and 
names  for  animals,  the  terms  for  action  accompanied  by 
sound,  and  tlie  materials  and  objects  so  acted  upon.  In 
further  investigation  it  becomes  more  and  more  requisite  to 
isolate  the  sound-type  or  root  from  the  modifications  and 
additions  to  which  it  has  been  subjected  for  grammatical 
and  phonetical  adaptation.  It  will  serve  to  give  an  idea 
of  the  extent  and  intricacy  of  this  problem,  to  glance  at  a 
group  of  words  in  one  European  language,  and  notice  the 
etymological  network  which  spreads  round  the  German 
word  klapf,  in  Grimm's  dictionary,  klappen,  klippen, 
klopfen,  kiajfen,  klimpcrn,  klampern,  klnteren,  kloteren, 
kUlteren,  klatzcn,  klackcn,  and  so  forth,  to  be  matched 
with  allied  forms  in  other  languages.  Setting  aside  tlie 
consideration  of  grammatical  inflexion,  it  belongs  to  the 
present  subject  to  notice  that  man's  imitative  faculty  in 
language  is  by  no  means  limited  to  making  direct  copies  of 
sound  and  shaping  them  into  words.  It  seizes  upon  ready- 
made  terxns  of  whatever  origin,  alters  and  adapts  them  to 
make  their  sound  fitting  to  their  sense,  and  pours  into  the 
dictionaries  a  flood  of  adapted  words  of  which  the  most 
diflficult  to  analyse  are  those  which  are  neither  altogether 
etymological  nor  altogether  imitative,  but  partly  both. 
How    words,    while    preserving,    so   to    speak,    the    same 


1 


\^    I'K. 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANQITAGE. 


21.-. 


skeleton,  may  be  made  to  follow  the  variation  of  sound,  of 
fox'ce,  of  duration,  of  size,  an  imitative  group  more  or  less 
com  L'cted  with  the  last  will  show — crick,  creak,  crack,  crash, 
crush,  crunch,  craunch,  scrunch,  ncraunch.  It  does  not  at 
all  follow  that  because  a  word  suffers  such  imitative  and 
symbolic  changes  it  must  be,  like  this,  directly  imitative  in 
its  origin.  What,  for  instance,  could  soimd  more  imitative 
than  the  name  of  that  old-fashioned  cannon  for  throwing 
grape-shot,  the  jxjf^erero?  Yet  the  etymology  of  the  word 
appears  in  the  Spanish  form  pcdrero,  French  perricr ;  it 
means  simply  an  instrument  for  throwing  stones  {piedra, 
pierre),  and  it  was  only  when  the  Spanish  word  was  adopted 
in  England  that  the  imitative  faculty  caught  and  ti-ans- 
formed  it  into  an  apparent  sound -word,  resembling  the  verb 
to  patter.  The  propensity  of  language  to  make  -^onse  of 
strange  words  by  altering  them  into  something  with  an 
appropriate  meaning  (like  beefeater  from  hiJTvticr)  has  been 
often  dwelt  upon  by  philologists,  but  the  propensity  to  alter 
words  into  something  with  an  appropriate  sound  has  produced 
results  immensely  more  important.  The  effects  of  symbolic 
change  of  sound  acting  upon  verb-roots  seem  almost  bound- 
less. The  verb  to  waddle  has  a  strong  imitative  appearance, 
and  so  in  German  we  can  hardly  resist  the  snc^rjestion 
that  imitative  sound  has  to  do  with  the  difference  between 
u-findcrn  and  wandeln ;  but  all  these  verbs  belong  to  a 
family  represented  by  Sanskrit  vad,  to  go,  Latin  vado,  and  to 
this  root  there  seems  no  sufficient  ground  for  assigning  an 
imitative  origin,  the  traces  of  which  it  has  at  any  rate  lost 
if  it  ever  had  them.  Thus,  again,  to  stamp  with  the  foot, 
which  has  been  claimed  as  an  imitation  of  sound,  seems  only 
a  "coloured"  word.  The  root  sta,  "to  stand,"  Sanskrit 
.^thd,  forms  a  causative  stap,  Sanskrit  sfhdpay,  "  to  make  to 
stand,"  English  to  stop,  and  a  footstep  is  when  the  foot 
comes  to  a  stand,  a  foot-stop.  But  we  have  Anglo-Saxon 
stapan,  stcepan,  steppan,  English  to  step,  varying  to  express 
its  meanmg  by  sound  in  to  sta'!p,  to  stamp,  to  stump,  and 
to  stomp,  contrasting  in  their  violence   or  clumsy  weight 


I     I 


llt< 


""-"'igW?''*";-^'''- 


•J  10 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


f:- 


with    the    foot    on  the   Dorset    cottage-sill — in    Barnes's 
poem : — 

"  Where  love  do  seek  the  maiden's  evenen  vloor, 
Wi'  stip-step  light,  an  tip-tap  slight 

Agean  the  door." 

By  expanding,  modifying,  or,  so  to  speak,  colouring, 
sound  is  able  to  produce  effects  closely  like  those  of  gesture- 
language,  expressing  length  or  shortness  of  time,  strength 
or  weakness  of  action,  and  then  passing  into  a  further  stage 
to  describe  greatness  or  smallness  of  size  or  of  distance, 
and  thence  making  its  way  into  the  widest  fields  of  metaphor. 
And  it  does  all  this  with  a  force  which  is  surprising  when 
we  consider  how  childishly  simple  are  the  means  employed. 
Thus  the  Bachapin  of  Africa  call  a  man  with  the  cry  hela  ! 
but  according  as  he  is  far  or  farther  oft*  the  sound  of  the 
heda  !  he-e-la !  is  lengthened  out.  Mr.  Macgregor  in  his 
*  Rob  Roy  on  the  Jordan,'  graphically  describes  this  method 
of  expression,  "*  But  wliere  is  Zalmouda?'  .  .  .  Then 
with  rough  eagerness  the  strongest  of  the  Dowana  faction 
pushes  his  long  forefinger  forward,  pointing  straight  enough 
— but  whither  ?  and  with  a  volley  of  words  ends,  Ah-ah-a- 

a-a a-a.     This    strange    expression    had   long   before 

puzzled  me  when  first  heard  from  a  shepherd  in  Bashan. 
.  .  .  But  the  simple  meaning  of  this  long  string  of  *fl/i's  ' 
shortened,  and  quickened,  and  lowered  in  tone  to  the  end, 
is  merely  that  the  place  pointed  to  is  a  *  very  great  way 
olf.'  "  The  Chinook  jargon,  as  usual  representing  primitive 
developments  of  language,  uses  a  similar  device  in  lengthen- 
ing the  sound  of  words  to  indicate  distance.  The  Siamese 
can,  by  varying  the  tone-accent,  make  the  syllable  non, 
"  there,"  express  a  near,  indefinite,  or  far  distance,  and  in 
like  manner  can  modify  the  meaning  of  such  a  word  as  ny, 
**  little."  In  the  Gaboon,  the  strength  with  which  such  a 
word  as  mpolu,  "great,"  is  uttered  serves  to  show  whether 
it  is  great,  very  great,  or  very  very  great,  and  in  this  way, 
as  Mr.  Wilson  remarks  in  his  *  Mpongwe  Grauinuir,'  **  the 


■;k 


_^«^^^<^f.«#«Pi«B«tlM> 


EMOTIONAL    AND     IlILTATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


21: 


i 


comparative  degrees  of  greatness,  smallness,  hardness, 
rapidity,  and  strength,  &c.,  may  be  conveyed  with  more 
accurac}^  and  precision  than  could  readily  be  conceived." 
In  Madngascar  ratchi  means  "bad,"  but  rdtcJii  is  "very 
bad."  The  natives  of  Australia,  according  to  Oldfield, 
show  the  use  of  this  process  in  combination  with  that  of 
symbolic  reduplication :  among  the  Watchandie  tribe  jir-rie 
signifies  "  already  or  past,"  jir-rie  jir-rie  indicates  "  a  long 
tiina  ago,"  while  jie-r-ric  jirrie  (the  first  syllable  being 
dwelt  on  for  some  time)  signifies  "  an  immense  time 


ilgO. 


Again,  hoo-rie  is  "  small,"  hoo-rie-hoo-rie  "  very  small,"  imd 
b-o-rie  hoorie  "exceedingly  small."  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt 
notices  the  habit  of  the  southern  Guarani  dialect  of  South 
America  of  dwelling  more  or  less  time  on  the  sufiiK  of  the 
perfect  tense,  y»ia,  y — ma,  to  indicate  the  length  or  short- 
ness of  the  distance  of  time  at  which  the  action  took  place ; 
and  it  is  curious  to  observe  that  a  similar  contrivance  is 
made  use  of  among  the  aboriginal  tribes  of  India,  where  the 
Ho  language  forms  a  future  tense  by  adding  d  to  the  root, 
and  prolonging  its  sound,  kajee  "  to  speak,"  Amg  kajeed 
"  I  will  speak."  As  miglit  be  expected,  the  languages  of 
very  rude  tribes  show  extremel}'  well  how  the  results  of  such 
primitive  processes  pass  into  the  recognized  stock  of 
language.  Nothing  could  be  better  for  this  than  the  words 
b}'  which  one  of  the  rudest  of  living  races,  the  Botocudos  of 
Brazil,  express  the  sea.  The}'  have  a  word  for  a  stream, 
ouatou,  and  an  adjective  which  means  great,  ijipaktjiou ; 
thence  the  two  words  "  stream-great,"  a  little  strengthened 
in  the  vowels,  will  give  the  term  for  a  river,  ouatou- 
ijiipaJdiijou,  as  it  were,  "  stream-grea-at,"  and  this,  to 
express  the  immensity  of  the  ocean,  is  amplified  into  ouatou- 
iijipakiijou-ou-ou-ou-ou-ou.  Another  tribe  of  the  same  family 
works  out  the  same  result  more  simply;  the  word  ouatou, 
"stream,"  becomes  ouatou- ou-ou-ou,  "the  sea."  The 
Chavantes  very  naturally  stretch  the  expression  rom-o-wodi, 
"I  go  a  long  way,"  into  rom-o-o-o-o-uodi,  "I  go  a  very 
long  way  indeed,"  and  when  they  are  called  upon  to  count 


'4 


;  I 


i' 


218 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


'ji  p-§ 


beyond  five  they  say  it  is  ka-o-o-oM,  by  wliieli  the}'  evidently 
mean  it  is  a  very  great  many.  The  Cauixanas  in  one 
vocabulary  are  described  as  saying  lawauugahi  for  four,  and 
drawling  out  the  same  word  for  five,  as  if  to  say  a  "  long 
four,"  in  somewhat  the  same  way  as  the  Aponegicrans, 
whose  word  for  six  is  itnwuna,  can  expand  this  into  a  word 
for  seven,  itawuuna,  obviously  thus  meaning  a  "  long  six." 
In  their  earlier  and  simpler  stnges  nothing  can  be  more 
easy  to  comprehend  than  these,  so  to  speak,  pictorial 
modifications  of  words.  It  is  true  that  writing,  even  witli 
the  aid  of  italics  and  capitals,  ignores  much  of  this  sym- 
bolism in  spoken  language,  but  every  child  can  see  its  use 
and  meaning,  in  spite  of  the  efforts  of  book-learning  and 
school-teaching  to  set  aside  whatever  cannot  be  expressed 
by  their  imperfect  symbols,  nor  controlled  by  thoir  narrow 
rules.  But  when  we  try  to  follow  out  to  their  full  results 
these  methods,  at  first  so  easy  to  trace  and  appreciate,  we 
soon  find  them  passing  out  of  our  grasp.  The  language  of 
the  Sahaptin  Indians  shows  us  a  process  of  modifying 
words  which  is  far  from  clear,  and  yet  not  utterly  obscure. 
These  Indians  have  a  way  of  making  a  kind  of  disrespectful 
diminutive  by  changing  the  n  in  a  word  to  I ;  thus  tirhiirt 
means  *'  tailless,"  but  to  indicate  particular  smallness,  or  to 
express  contempt,  they  make  this  into  tw'ilwt,  pronounced 
with  an  appropriate  change  of  tone  ;  and  again,  wana  means 
**  river,"  but  this  is  made  into  a  diminutive  wala  by  "  chang- 
ing n  into  I,  giving  the  voice  a  different  tone,  putting  the 
lips  out  in  speaking,  and  keeping  them  suspended  around 
the  jaw."  Here  we  are  told  enough  about  the  change  of 
pronunciation  to  guess  at  least  how  it  could  convey  the 
notions  of  smallness  and  contempt.  But  it  is  less  easy  to 
follow  the  process  by  which  the  Mpongwe  language  turns 
an  affirmative  into  a  negative  verb  by  **  an  intonation  upon, 
or  prolongation  of  the  radical  vowel,"  tdndn,  to  love,  tdnda, 
not  to  love  ;  tdndo  to  be  loved,  tdiido,  not  to  be  loved.  So 
Yoruba,  hdba,  "  a  great  thing,"  hdha,  "  a  small  thing,"  con- 
trasted in  a  proverb,  "  Baha  bo,  haba  molle  " — "  A  great 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


:il!) 


I  one 
r,  aiul 
"loBg 

a  word 
.    >» 

<v    SIX. 

e  more 
nctorinl 
en  witl^ 
lis  sym- 
5  its  ns(^ 
ning  and 
expressed 
LV  narrow 
ill  results 
•eciate,  we 
iinguage  of 

modlfyi^^g 
y  obscure, 
srespccttul 
iiis  tn-'inw^ 
Iness,  or  to 
^n-onounced 
ana  means 
Ly  '*  cliang- 
putting  tUe 
'ded  around 
^e  change  of 
convey  t\ic 
xess  easy  to 
auage  turns 
[nation  up^n, 
love,  f{5'i<lrt, 
loved.     So 
con- 


I  tiling, 


."  A.  great 


matter  puts  a  smaller  out  of  sight."  Language  is,  in  fact, 
full  of  phonetic  modifications  which  justify  a  suspicion  that 
sj'mbolic  sound  had  to  do  with  their  production,  though  it» 
may  be  hard  to  say  exactly  how. 

Agoin.  there  is  the  familiar  process  of  reduplication,  simple 
or  modified,  which  produces  such  forms  as  murinur,  jntpat, 
heltersJcelter.  This  action,  though  much  restricted  in  literary 
dialects,  has  such  immense  scope  in  the  talk  of  children 
and  savages  that  Professor  Pott's  treatise  on  it*  has  become 
incidentall}'^  one  of  the  most  valuable  collections  of  facts  ever 
made  with  relation  to  early  stages  of  language.  Now  up  to  a 
certain  point  any  child  can  see  how  and  why  such  doubling  is 
done,  and  how  it  always  adds  something  to  the  original  idea. 
It  may  make  superlatives  or  otherwise  intensify  words,  as  in 
Polynesia  loa  "long,"  lololoa  "very  long";  Mandingo  diiKj 
"a  child,"  dingdhifj  "a  very  little  child."  It  makes  plurals, 
as  Malay  raja-raja  "princes,"  orang-orang  "people."  It 
adds  numerals,  as  Mosquito  iv alwal  **  fowr"  (two-two),  or 
distributes  them,  as  Coptic  ouai  ouai  "singly"  (one-one). 
These  are  cases  where  the  motive  of  doubling  is  comparatively 
easy  to  make  out.  As  an  example  of  cases  much  more  diffi- 
cult to  comprehend  may  be  taken  the  familiar  reduplication 
of  the  perfect  tense,  Greek  yiypa^a  from  ypa(/)(o,  Latin 
vwmordi  from  mordeo,  Gothic  haiJiald  from  haldan,  "to 
hold.'  Reduplication  is  habituallj'^  used  in  imitative  words 
to  intensify  them,  and  still  more,  to  show  that  the  sound  is 
repeated  or  continuous.  From  the  immense  mass  of  such 
words  we  may  take  as  instances  the  Botocudo  hm-hou-hni- 
gitcha  "  to  suck"  (compare  Tongan  huJtu  "  breast"),  kiaku- 
kf'ick-kuck  "a  butterfly";  Quichua  chiuiuiumichi  "wind 
whistling  in  the  trees  "  ;  Maori  haruru  "  noise  of  wind  "  ; 
hdioro  "hurry";  Dayak  kakakkaka  "to  go  on  laughing 
loud  "  ;  Aino  shiriiishiriukanni  "  a  rasp  "  ;  Tamil  murumuru 
**  to  murmur  "  ;  Akra  ewiewiewiewie  "  he  spoke  repeatedly 

'  Pott,  '  Doppelung  (Rediiplitatioii,  Gemination)  als  eines  der  wiclitiffstea 
BildiMigsinittel  der  Spraehe,'  186*2.  Frequent  use  has  been  here  made  of  this 
work. 


i 


\^ 


1 


>',.: 


..ir'^^jfj^-fi''*^-! 


220 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


and  continually  "  ;  and  so  on,  throughout  the  whole  range  of 
the  languages  of  the  world. 

The  device  of  convening  different  ideas  of  distance  by  the 
use  of  a  graduated  scale  of  vowt4s  seems  to  me  one  of  great 
philological  interest,  from  the  suggestive  hint  it  gives  of  the 
proceedings  of  the  language-makers  in  most  distant  regions 
of  the  world,  working  out  in  various  ways  a  similar  ingenious 
contrivance  of  expression  b}'  sound.  A  typical  series  is  the 
Javan  :  iki  "  this "  (close  by)  ;  ika  "  that"  (at  some 
distance);  iku  "  that "  (farther  off).  It  is  not  likely  that 
the  following  list  nearl}'  exhausts  the  whole  number  of  cases 
in  the  languages  of  the  world,  for  about  half  the  number 
have  been  incidentally  noted  down  by  myself  without  any 
especial  search,  but  merely  in  the  course  of  looking  over 
vocabularies  of  the  lower  races. ^ 

Jiivan       .         .         .     ill,  this ;  ■ilea,  that  (intermediate) ;  iku,  that. 
Malagasy  ,         .     ao,  thiTu  (at  a  short  distance) ;  eo,  there  (at  a 

sliovtov  distance) ;  to,  there,  (close  at  hand). 
atsif,  there  (not  far  off);  etsi/,  there  (nearer); 

i/si/,  this  or  these. 
Japanese  .         .        .    ko,  hero ;  ka,  there. 

koreru,  these  ;  karera,  they  (those). 
Canarese  .        .        .    ivain/.thi^;  Muanw,  that  (intermediate) ;  avanu, 

that. 
Tamul       .         .         ,1,  this ;  a,  that. 
Eajmahali         .         ,     t/t,  this;  a/;,  that. 
Dhimal     .         .         .     isJw,  ita,  hero;  usho,  uta,  there. 

iti,  iiloiKj,  this;  nfi,  mloiicj,  that  [of  things  and 

persons  respectively]. 
Abchasian         .         .     abri,  this;  ubri,  that. 
Ossetic      .         .         .     am,  here ;  um,  tiiore. 
Magyar     .         .         .     ez,  this;  az,  that. 
Zulu         .        .         .    apa,  here;  apo,  there. 

lesi,  If  so,  lesiya  ;   abu,  abo,  ahuya ;  &c.  ssthis, 

that,  that  (in  the  distance). 

'  For  authorities  see  especially  Pott,  'Doppelung,'  p.  30,  47-49;  W.  v. 
Humboldt,  '  Kii\vi-Sj)r.'  vol.  ii.  p.  36  ;  Max  Miiller  in  Bunsen,  '  Philos.  of 
Univ.  Hist.,'  vol.  i.  p.  3129;  Latham,  'Comii.  Phil.'  p.  20iJ ;  and  tlu'  gram- 
mars and  dicticniuios  of  the  |iartii;ular  laiiiruages  The  Guaraiii  and  Caiib  on 
autliority  of  D'Orbiguy,  '  L'lldiuiue  Anu'rii'ain,'  vol.  ii.  p.  2ti8  ;  Dhimal  of 
Hodgson,  'Abor.  of  India,'  p.  ()9,  79,  115;  Colville  lud.  of  Wilson  in  '  Tr. 
Eth.  Soc.,'  voL  iv.  p.  ^31  ;  Botocudo  of  Martins,  'Gloss.  Brasil.' 


iW!miiiHiM>i 


of 


=  this, 


1;  W. 

V. 

^liiloa 

of 

10  gn 

m- 

Caiib 

ou 

hinial  of 

1  in  ' 

Tv. 

EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGTTAGR. 


">1 


Yoruba  .  .  .  na,  this;  7ii,  that. 
Fernandian  .  .  olo,  this ;  oh,  that, 
Tumale     .         .        .re,  this ;  ri,  that. 

ngi,  I ;  n(jo,  thou ;  ngu,  he. 
Greenlandish    .        .    uv,  here,  there  (where  one  points  to) ;  iw,  there, 

up  there  [found  in  comp.]. 
Sujelpa  (Colville  Ind.),  axn,  this ;  ixh  that. 
Saliaptiu  .         ,         .     kiiia,  here ;  kuna,  there. 
Mutsuu    .         .         .     ne,  here ;  nu,  there. 
Tarahumara     .         .     ibe,  here ;  abe,  there. 
Guarani    .         .         .     nde,  ne,  thou ;  mil,  ni,  he. 
Botocudo  .         .     ati,  I ;  oti,  thou,  you,  (prep.)  to. 

Carib         .         .         ,    ne,  thou  ;  ni,  he. 
Chilian      .         .         .     tva,  vacid,  this ;  tuey,  veyclii,  that. 

It  is  obvious  on  inspection  of  this  list  of  pronouns  and 
adverbs  that  they  have  in  some  way  come  to  have  their 
vowels  contrasted  to  match  the  contrast  of  here  and  there,  this 
and  that.  Accident  may  sometimes  account  for  such  cases. 
For  instance  it  is  well  known  to  philologists  that  our  own 
this  ..lid  that  are  pronouns  partly  distinct  in  tlieir  formation, 
thi-H  being  probably  two  pronouns  run  together,  but  yet  the 
Dutch  neuters  dit  "  this,"  and  dut  "  that,"  have  taken  the 
appearance  of  a  single  form  with  contrasted  vowels.^  ]>ut 
accident  cannot  account  for  the  frequency  of  such  words  in 
pairs,  and  even  in  sets  of  three,  in  so  many  diiierent  lan- 
guages. There  must  have  been  some  common  intention  at 
work,  and  there  is  evidence  that  some  of  these  languages  do 
resort  to  a  change  of  sound  as  a  means  of  expressing  change 
of  distance.  Thus  the  language  of  Fernando  Po  can  not 
only  express  "  this  "  and  "  that  "  by  olo,  ole,  but  it  can  even 
make  a  change  of  the  pronunciation  of  the  vowel  distinguish 
between  o  boeJie  "  this  month,"  and  oh  boehe,  "  that  month." 
In  the  same  way  the  Grebo  can  make  the  dilferonce  between 
"  I  "  and  "  thou,"  "  we,"  and  "  you,"  "  solely  by  the  intona- 
tion of  the  voice,  which  the  final  h  of  the  second  persons 
Vi'ih  and  Cth  is  intended  to  express." 

md  di,  I  eat;  rniih  di,  thou  eatestj 
d  di,  we  eat;    ah  di,  ye  eat. 

'  Also  Old  High  Gcniiau  diz  and  dm. 


I'm 


h' 


I 


■  a 


fi 


1r 


h     I 


222 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LAXGUAGR 


The  set  of  Zulu  demonstratives  wliieh  express  the  three 
distances  of  near,  farther,  farthest,  are  very  complex,  but  a 
remark  as  to  their  use  shows  how  thoroughly  symbolic 
sound  enters  into  their  nature.  The  Zulus  not  only  say 
>>((7ifii,  "here  is,"  nanso,  "there  is,"  nansiya,  "there  is  in 
the  distance,"  but  they  even  express  the  greatness  of  this 
distance  by  the  emphasis  and  prolongation  of  the  ya.  If  we 
could  discern  a  similar  gradation  of  the  vowels  to  express  a 
corresponding  gradation  of  distance  throughout  our  list,  the 
whole  matter  would  be  easier  to  explain ;  but  it  is  not  so, 
the  i-words,  for  instance,  are  sometimes  nearer  and  some- 
times farther  off  than  the  a- words.  We  can  only  judge  that, 
as  any  child  can  see  that  a  scale  of  vowels  makes  a  most 
expressive  scale  of  distances,  many  pronouns  and  adverbs  in 
use  in  the  world  have  probably  taken  their  shape  under  the 
influence  of  this  sim})le  device,  and  thus  there  have  arisen 
sets  of  what  we  may  call  contrasted  or  "  differential " 
words. 

How  the  differencing  of  words  by  change  of  vowels  may 
be  used  to  distinguish  between  the  sexes,  is  well  put  in  a 
remark  of  Professor  Max  Midler's  :  "  The  distinction  of 
gender  ...  is  sometimes  expressed  in  such  a  manner  that 
we  can  only  explain  it  by  ascribing  an  expressive  power  to 
tl:e  more  or  less  obscure  sound  of  vowels.  Ukko,  in  Finnic, 
is  an  old  man ;  akka,  an  old  woman  ...  In  Mangu  chacha 
is  mas.  .  .  .  checlie,  femina.  Again,  ama,  in  Mangu,  is 
father  ;  erne,  mother  ;  amclia,  father-in-law,  emche,  mother- 
in-law."  ^  The  Coretii  language  of  Brazil  has  another 
curiously  contrasted  pair  of  words  tsdacko,  "  father,"  tsaacko 
"  mother,"  while  the  Carib  has  baba  for  father,  and  bibi  for 
mother,  and  the  Ibu  of  Africa  has  iDta  for  father  and  nne  for 
mother.  This  contrivance  of  distinguishing  the  male  from 
the  female  by  a  diii'erence  of  vowels  is  however  but  a  small 
part  of  the  process  of  formation  which  can  be  traced  among 
Buch  words  as  those  for  father  and  mother.     Their  eonside- 

^  Max  Miiller,  1.  o. 


I 


ijiij'iawj.i.im'iil'iMUf.' 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


22:; 


I 


ration  leads  into  a  very  interesting  philological  region,  Jiai 
of  **  Children's  Language." 

If  we  set  down  a  few  of  the  pairs  of  words  which  stand 
for  "father"  and  "mother"  in  very  different  and  distant 
languages — papa  and  mama ;  Welsh,  tad  {dad)  and  mam ; 
Hungarian,  a/i/a  and  anya ;  Mandingo, /a  and  6a ;  Lummi 
(N.  America),  man  and  tan ;  Catoquina  (S.  America),  payu 
and  nayu ;  Watchandie  (Australia),  amo  and  ago — their 
contrast  seems  to  lie  in  their  consonants,  while  many  other 
pairs  differ  totally,  like  Hebrew  ah  and  im;  Kuki,  plia  and 
noo ;  Kayan,  amay  and  inei ;  Tarahumara,  nono  and  jeje. 
Words  of  the  class  of  papa  and  mama,  occurring  in  remote 
parts  of  the  world,  were  once  freely  used  as  evidence  of  a 
common  origin  of  the  languages  in  which  they  were  found 
alike.  But  Professor  Buschmann's  paper  on  "Nature- 
Sound,"  published  in  1853,^  effectually  overthrew  this 
argument,  and  settled  the  view  that  such  coincidences 
might  arise  again  and  again  by  independent  production. 
It  was  clearly  of  no  use  to  argue  that  Carib  and  English 
were  allied  because  the  Avord  papa,  "  father,"  belongs  to 
both,  or  Hottentot  and  English  because  both  use  mama  for 
"mother,"  seeing  that  these  childish  articulations  maybe 
used  in  just  the  opposite  way,  for  the  Chilian  word  for 
mother  is  papa,  and  the  Tlatskanai  for  fatlier  is  mama. 
Yet  the  choice  of  easy  litlle  words  for  "father"  and 
"mother"  does  not  seem  to  have  been  quite  indiscriminate. 
The  immense  list  of  such  words  collected  by  Buschmann 
shows  that  the  types  pa  and  ta,  with  the  similar  forms  ap 
aiid  at,  preponderate  in  the  world  as  names  for  "fiither," 
while  ma  and  na,  am  and  an,  preponderate  as  names  for 
"  mother."  His  explanation  of  this  state  of  things  as 
affected  by  direct  symbolism  choosing  the  hard  sound  for  the 
father,  and  the  gentler  for  the  mother,  has  very  likely  truth 
in  it,  but  it  must  not  be  pushed  too  far.     It  cannot  be,  for 

'  J.  C.  E.  Busclmiaiin,  '  Ueber  den  Naturlaut,'  Berlin,  1853  ;  and  in  'Abh. 
dor  K.  Akad.  d.  Wis.sensch.'  1852.  An  English  trans,  iu  '  Troc.  Philologicnl 
Society,'  vol.  vi.     See  De  Bnis.>5us,  '  Foim.  des  L.,'  voL  i.  p.  211. 


!l 


};1 


m 


I     m 


t 


i:    ji    i' 


a       l: 


!•     'lii' 


1  i\      I 


;  ■"! 

1 

■  ■ 

i  1- 

224 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


instance,  the  same  principle  of  symbolism  which  leads  the 
Welshman  to  say  tad  for  "  father  "  and  mam  for  "  mollier," 
and  the  Indian  of  British  Columbia  to  say  maan,  **  father  " 
and  taan,  "motlier,"or  the  Georgian  to  say  mama,  "father" 
and  deda,  "  mother."  Yet  I  have  not  succeeded  in  finding 
any^vhere  our  familiar  papa  and  mama  exactly  reversed  in 
one  and  the  same  language  ;  the  nearest  approach  to  it 
that  I  can  give  is  from  the  island  of  Meang,  where  mama 
meant  "  father,  man,"  and  hahi,  "  mother,  woman." ^ 

Between  the  nurserj'  words  papa  and  mama  and  the  more 
formal  father  and  mother  there  is  an  obvious  resemblance  in 
sound.  "What,  then,  is  the  origin  of  these  wordn  father  and 
mother  ?  Up  to  a  certain  point  their  history  is  clear.  They 
belong  to  the  same  group  of  organised  words  with  vater  and 
mutter,  pater  and  mater,  nar-qp  and  ixr]Tr]p,pitari\\\di  mdtar,  and 
other  similar  forms  through  the  Indo-European  family  of 
languages.  There  is  no  doubt  that  all  these  pairs  of  names 
are  derived  from  an  ancient  and  common  Aryan  source,  and 
when  they  are  traced  back  as  far  as  possible  towards  that 
source,  they  appear  to  have  sprung  from  a  pair  of  words 
which  ma}'^  be  roughly  called  jiatar  and  matar,  and  which 
were  formed  by  adding  tar,  the  suffix  of  the  actor,  to  the 
verb-roots  pa  and  ma.  There  being  two  appropriate  Sanskrit 
verbs  pd  and  md,  it  is  possible  to  etymologize  the  two  words 
as  j)atar,  "  protector,"  and  matar,  "  producer."  Now  this 
pair  of  Aryan  words  must  have  been  very  ancient,  lying  back 
at  the  remote  common  source  from  which  forms  parallel  to 
our  English  father  and  mother  passed  into  Greek  and 
Persian,  Norse  and  Armenian,  thus  holding  fixed  type 
through  the  eventful  course  of  Indo-European  history.  Yet, 
ancient  as  these  words  are,  they  were  no  doubt  preceded 
by  simpler  rudimentary  words  of  the  children's  language, 
for  it  is  not  likely  that  the  primitive  Aryans  did  without 
baby-words  for  father  and  mother  until  they  had  an 
organized  system  of  adding  suffixes  to  verb-roots  to  express 

'  One  family  of  huigiiages,  tlie  Atlinjiiisraii,  contains  botli  appd  and  mama 
as  terms  for  "fathi'r,"  in  the  Tahivuli  and  Tlalskanai. 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


22/> 


such  notions  as  "  protector"  or '*  producer."  Nor  can  it 
be  supposed  that  it  was  by  mere  accident  that  the  root- 
words  thus  chosen  happened  to  be  the  very  sounds  pa  and 
ma,  whose  types  so  often  occur  in  the  remotest  parts  of  the 
workl  as  names  for  **  father"  and  "  mother."  Prof.  Adolphe 
Pictet  makes  shift  to  account  for  the  coincidence  thus  :  he 
postulates  first  the  pair  of  forms  pd  and  md  as  Aryan  verb- 
roots  of  unknown  origin,  meaning  "to  protect"  and  "to 
create,"  next  another  pair  of  forms  pa  and  ma,  chiklren's 
words  commonly  used  to  denote  father  and  mother,  and 
lastly  he  combines  the  two  by  supposing  that  the  root- 
verbs  pd  and  }iid  were  chosen  to  form  the  Indo-European 
words  for  parents,  because  of  their  resemblance  to  the 
familiar  baby-words  already  in  use.  This  circuitous  pro- 
cess at  any  rate  saves  those  sacred  monosyllables,  the 
Sanskrit  verb-roots,  from  the  disgrace  of  an  assignable 
origin.  Yet  those  who  remember  that  these  verb-roots  are 
only  a  set  of  crude  forms  in  use  in  one  particular  language 
of  the  world  at  one  particular  period  of  its  development, 
may  account  for  the  facts  more  simply  and  more  thoroughl}-. 
It  is  a  fair  guess  that  the  ubiquitous  ^J'f  ^md  ma  of  the 
children's  language  were  the  original  forms  ;  that  they  were 
used  in  an  early  period  of  Aryan  speech  as  indiscriminately 
substantive  and  verb,  just  as  our  modern  English,  which  so 
often  reproduces  the  most  rudimentary  linguistic  processes, 
can  form  from  the  noun  "  father  "  a  verb  "  to  father  ;  "  and 
that  lastly  they  became  verb-roots,  whence  the  words 
patar  and  matar  were  formed  by  the  addition  of  the 
suffix.^ 

The  baby-names  for  parents  must  not  be  studied  as  though 
they  stood  alone  in  language.  They  are  only  important 
members  of  a  great  class  of  words,  belonging  to  all  times 
and  countries  within  our  experience,  and  forming  a  chil- 
dren's language,  whose  common  character  is  due  to  its  con- 


I     ■  a 


i:i 


ii   til 


I     t 


M 


'  See  Pott,  'Indo-Ger.  Wurzelworterb.' s.  v.  "pa";  BbhtliiiKk  ami  \\«th, 
'  Sanskrit- Wiirtorb.'  s.  v.  matar ;  Pietet,  '  Origiues  ludo-Europ.,'  pMit  ii 
p.  319.     Max  MUller,  •Lectuies,'  2u(l  series,  p.  212. 

VOL.  I.  Q 


i 


22G 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


\ii-\   •' 


ceming  itself  witli  the  limited  set  of  ideas  in  which  little 
children  are  interested,  and  expressing  these  ideas  by  the 
limited  set  of  articulations  suited  to  the  child's  first  attempts 
to  talk.  This  peculiar  language  is  marked  quite  character- 
istically among  the  low  savage  tribes  of  Australia ;  mamman 
"father,"  ngangan  "mother,"  and  by  metaphor  "thumb," 
"  great  toe  "  (as  is  more  fully  explained  in  jinnamamman 
"great  toe,"  i.e.  foot's  father),  tammin  "grandfather  or 
grandmother,"  hah-ha  "  bad,  foolish,  childish,"  bee-bee,  beep 
"  hrenst," 2u'PP^  "father,"  pappa  "young  one,  pup,  whelp," 
(whence  is  grammatically  formed  the  verb  papparniti  "  to  be- 
come a  young  one,  to  be  born."  Or  if  we  look  for  examples 
from  India,  it  does  not  matter  whether  we  take  them  from 
non-Hindu  or  Hindu  languages,  for  in  baby-language  all 
races  are  on  one  footing.  Thus  Tamil  appd  "fiither," 
ammd  "mother,"  Bodo  aphd  "father,"  dyd  "motlier;"  the 
Kocch  group  ndnd  and  ndni  "  paternal  grandfather  and 
grandmother,"  md),A  "  uncle,"  dddd  "  cousin,"  may  be  set 
beside  Sanskrit  tata  "  father,"  nand  "  mother,"  and  the 
Hindustani  words  of  the  same  class,  of  which  some  are 
familiar  to  the  English  ear  by  being  naturalized  in  Anglo- 
Indian  talk,  bdhd  "  father,"  bdbii  "  child,  prince,  Mr.,"  hibi 
"  lady,"  dadd  "  nurse  "  idyd  "  nurse  "  seems  borrowed  from 
Portuguese).  Such  words  are  continually  coming  fresh  into 
existence  everywhere,  and  the  law  of  natural  selection 
determines  their  .*'ate.  The  great  mass  of  the  nana's  and 
dada's  of  the  nursery  die  out  almost  as  soon  as  made. 
Seme  few  take  more  root  and  spread  over  large  districts  as 
accepted  nurser}  words,  and  now  and  then  a  curious 
philologist  makes  a  collection  of  them.  Of  such,  many  are 
obvious  mutilations  of  longer  words,  as  French  faire  dodo 
"  to  sleep  "  (dormir),  Brandenburg  wiwi,  a  common  cradle 
lullaby  (wiegen).  Others,  whatever  their  origin,  fall,  in 
consequence  of  the  small  variety  of  articulations  out  of 
which  they  must  be  chosen,  into  a  curiously  indiscriminate 
and  unmeaning  mass,  as  Swiss  bobo  "a  scratch;  "  bambam 
"  all    gone ;  "    Italian   bobo    "  something  to   drink,"  gogo 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


22; 


"  little  boy,"  fur  dcde  "  to  play."  These  are  words  quoted 
by  Pott,  and  for  Englisli  examples  nrtnti  "  nurse,"  tata! 
"  good-bye  !  *'  may  serve.  But  all  hahj-\\on\'g,y  as  this  very 
name  proves,  do  not  stop  short  even  at  this  stage  of  pub- 
licity. A  small  proportion  of  them  establish  themselves  in 
the  ordinary  talk  of  grown-up  men  and  women,  and  when 
they  have  once  made  good  their  place  as  constituents  of 
general  language,  they  may  pass  on  by  inheritance  from  age 
to  age.  Such  examples  as  have  been  here  quoted  of  nursery 
words  give  a  clue  to  the  origin  of  a  mass  of  names  in  the 
most  diverse  languages,  for  father,  mother,  grandmother, 
aunt,  child,  breast,  toy,  doll,  &c.  Tlie  negro  of  Fernando 
Po  who  uses  the  word  huhhoh  for  **  a  little  bo)',"  is  on  e(iual 
terms  with  the  German  who  uses  huhe;  the  Congo-man  who 
uses  tata  for  "  father "  would  understand  how  Ino  same 
word  could  be  used  in  classic  Latin  for  "  fother  "  and  in 
meditBval  Latin  for  "pedagogue;  "  the  Carib  and  the  Caroline 
Is^mder  agree  with  the  Englishman  i\\nX  jya pa  is  a  suitable 
word  to  express  "  father,"  and  then  it  only  remains  to  carry 
on  the  word,  and  make  the  baby-language  name  the  priests 
of  the  Eastern  Church  and  the  great  Papa  of  the  Western. 
At  the  same  time  the  evidence  explains  the  indiirenmce 
with  which,  out  of  the  small  stock  of  available  materials, 
the  same  sound  does  duty  for  the  most  different  ideas ;  why 
mama  means  here  "mother,"  Ciiere  "father,"  there  "uncle," 
maman  here  "  mother,"  there  "  father-in-law,"  dada  here 
"father,"  there  "nurse,"  there  "breast,"  tata  here  "father," 
there  "  son."  A  single  group  of  words  may  serve  to  show 
this  character  of  this  peculiar  region  of  language :  Black- 
foot  Indian  ninnah  "  father  ;  "  Greek  vivvos  "  uncle,"  vu'va 
"  aunt ; "  Zulu  nina,  Sangir  nina,  Malagasy  nini  "  m.other  ; " 
Javan  nini  "  grandfather  or  grandmother ; "  Vayu  nini  "  pa- 
ternal aunt;  "  Darien  Indian  vAnah  "  daughter;  "  Spanish 
ninoy  nina  "  child  ;  "  Italir.n  7iinna  "  little  girl ;  "  Milanese 
ninin  "  bed  ;  "  Italian  ninnare  "  to  rock  the  cradle." 

In  this  way  a  dozen  ea?y  child's  articulations,  ba*s  and 
no's,  ti's  and  de's,  pa's  and  ma''s,  serve  almost  as  indiscrimi- 

q2 


I, 


.!M 


1! 


J;  i 


^   |; 


:l 


II 


iu 


it 


':'i!i  :i 


228 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


nately  to  express  a  dozen  child's  ideas  as  though  they  had 
been  shaken  in  a  bag  and  pulled  out  at  random  to  express 
the  notion  that  came  first,  doll  or  uncle,  nurso  or  grand- 
father. It  is  obvious  that  among  words  cramped  to  such 
scanty  choice  of  articulate  sounds,  speculations  as  to  deriva- 
tion must  be  more  than  usually  unsafe.  Looked  at  from 
this  point  of  view,  children's  language  may  give  a  valuable 
lesson  to  the  philologist.  He  has  before  him  a  kind  of 
language,  formed  under  peculiar  conditions,  and  showing  the 
weak  points  of  his  method  of  philological  research,  onh' 
exaggerated  into  extraordinary  distinctness.  In  ordinary 
language,  the  difficulty  of  connecting  sound  with  sense  lies 
in  great  measure  in  the  inability  of  a  small  and  rigid  set  of 
articulations  to  express  an  interminable  variety  of  tones  and 
noises.  In  children's  language,  a  still  more  scanty  set  of 
articulations  fails  yet  more  to  render  these  distinctly.  The 
difficulty  of  finding  the  derivation  of  words  lies  in  great 
measure  in  the  use  of  more  or  less  similar  root-sounds  for 
most  heterogeneous  purposes.  To  assume  that  two  words 
of  different  meanings,  just  because  they  sound  somewhat 
alike,  must  therefore  have  a  common  origin,  is  even  in 
ordinary  language  the  great  source  of  bad  etymology.  But 
in  children's  language  the  theory  of  root-sounds  fairly 
breaks  down.  Few  would  venture  to  assert,  for  instance, 
that  paj)a  and  pap  have  a  common  derivation  or  a  common 
root.  All  that  we  can  safely  say  of  connexion  between 
them  is  that  thej"^  are  words  related  by  common  acceptance 
in  the  nursery  language.  As  such,  they  are  well  marked  in 
ancient  Rome  as  in  modern  England:  papas  "nutricius, 
nutritor,''  pappus  "  senex ;  "  "  cum  cibum  et  potum  buas  ac 
papas  dicunt,  et  matrem  manimam,  patrem  tatam  (or 
papam.)"^ 

From  children's  language,  moreover,  we  have  striking 
proof  of  the  power  of  consensus  of  society,  in  establishing 
words  in  settled  use  without  their  carrying  traces  of  inherent 


•  Facciolati,  '  Lex. '  Varro  ap.  Nonn.,  ii.  97. 


they  had 

express 

r  griincl- 

[  to  such 

0  deriva- 
at  from 
valuable 

,  kind  of 
)wing  the 
rch,  only 

ordinary 
sense  lies 
Liid  set  of 
tones  and 
iity  set  of 
tly.     The 

in  great 
;onnds  for 
Avo  words 
somewhat 

1  even  in 
igv.  But 
ids    fairly 

instance, 

common 

between 

jceptance 

larked  in 

lutricius, 

In  huas  ac 

|(/fa??i    (or 

striking 

[ablishing 

'inherent 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


•229 


expressiveness.  It  is  true  that  children  are  intimately  ac- 
<iuainted  with  the  use  of  emotional  and  imitative  sound,  and 
their  vocal  intercourse  largely  consists  of  such  expression. 
The  effects  of  this  are  in  some  degree  discernible  in  the 
class  of  words  we  are  considering.  But  it  is  obvious  that 
the  leading  principle  of  their  formation  is  net  to  adopt 
words  distinguished  by  the  expressive  character  of  their 
sound,  but  to  choose  somehow  a  fixed  word  to  answer  a 
given  purpose.  To  do  this,  different  languages  have  chosen 
similar  articulations  to  express  the  most  diverse  and  oppo- 
site ideas.  Now  in  the  language  of  grown-up  people,  it  is 
clear  that  social  consensus  has  worked  in  the  same  way. 
Even  if  the  extreme  supposition  be  granted,  that  the  ultimate 
origin  of  every  word  of  language  lies  in  inherently  expressive 
sound,  this  only  partly  affects  the  case,  for  it  would  have  to 
be  admitted  that,  in  actual  languages,  most  words  have  so  far 
departed  in  sound  or  sense  from  this  originally  expres- 
sive stage,  that  to  all  intents  and  purposes  they  might  at  first 
have  been  arbitrarily  chosen.  The  main  principle  of 
language  has  been,  not  to  preserve  traces  of  original  sound- 
signification  for  the  benefit  of  future  etymologists,  but  to  fix 
elements  of  language  to  serve  as  counters  for  practical 
reckoning  of  ideas.  In  this  process  much  original  expres- 
siveness has  no  doubt  disappeared  beyond  all  hope  of 
recovery. 

Such  are  some  of  the  ways  in  which  vocal  sounds  seem  to 
have  commended  themselves  to  the  mind  of  the  word-maker 
as  fit  to  express  his  meaning,  and  to  have  been  used  accor- 
dingly. I  do  not  think  that  the  evidence  here  adduced 
justifies  the  setting-up  of  what  is  called  the  Interjectional 
and  Imitative  Theory  as  a  complete  solution  of  the  problem 
of  original  language.  Valid  as  this  theory  proves  itself 
within  limits,  it  would  be  incautious  to  accept  a  hypothesis 
which  can  perhaps  satisfactorily  account  for  a  twentieth  of 
the  crude  forms  in  any  language,  as  a  certain  and  absolute 
explanation  of  the  nineteen-twentieths  whose  origin  remains 
doubtful.     A  key  must  unlock  more  doors  than  this,  to  be 


!  !' 


'  i '  ! ' 


Ik- 


if' 


230 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


i  I 


! 


T  ! '' 


I  111 


;ii 


taken  as  the  master-key.  Moreover,  some  t^pecial  points 
which  have  come  under  consideration  in  these  clinpters  tmd 
to  show  the  positive  necessit}'  of  such  caution  in  theorizing. 
Too  narrow  a  theory  of  the  application  of  sound  to  sense 
may  fiiil  to  inohide  the  varied  devices  which  the  languages 
of  different  regions  turn  to  account.  It  is  thus  with  the 
distinction  in  meaning  of  a  word  by  its  musical  accent,  and 
the  distinction  of  distnnce  by  graduated  vowels.  These  are 
ingenious  and  intelligible  contrivances,  but  they  hardly 
seem  directly  emotional  or  imitative  in  origin.  A  safer  way 
of  putting  the  theory  of  a  natural  origin  of  language  is 
to  postulate  the  original  utterance  of  ideas  in  what  may 
be  called  self-expressive  sounds,  without  defining  closely 
whether  their  expression  lay  in  emotional  tone,  imitative 
noise,  contrast  of  accent  or  vowel  or  consonant,  or  other 
phonetic  qualit}^  Even  here,  exception  of  unknown  and 
perhaps  enormous  extent  must  be  made  for  sounds  chosen 
by  individuals  to  exjjress  some  notion,  from  motives  which 
even  their  own  minds  failed  to  discern,  but  which  sounds 
nevertheless  made  good  their  footing  in  the  language  of  the 
famil}',  the  tribe,  and  the  nation.  There  may  be  many 
modes  even  of  recognizable  phonetic  expression,  unknown 
to  us  as  yet.  So  far,  however,  as  I  have  been  able  to  trace 
them  here,  such  modes  have  in  common  a  claim  to  belong 
not  exclusively  to  the  scheme  of  this  or  that  particular 
dialect,  but  to  wide-ranging  principles  of  formation  of  lan- 
guage. Their  examples  are  to  be  drawn  with  equal  cogency 
from  Sanskrit  or  Hebrew,  from  the  nursery-language  of 
Lombardy,  or  the  half-Indian,  half-European  jargon  of 
Vancouver's  Island ;  and  wherever  they  are  found,  they 
help  to  furnish  groups  of  sound-words — words  which  have 
not  lost  the  traces  of  their  first  expressive  origin,  but  still 
carry  their  direct  significance  plainly  stamped  upon  them. 
In  fact,  the  time  has  now  come  for  a  substantial  basis  to  be 
laid  for  Generative  Philolog3\  A  classified  collection  of 
words  with  any  strong  claim  to  be  self-expressive  should  be 
bri^ght  together  out  of  the  thousand  or  so  of  recognized 


I  i 


EMOTIONAL    AND    TIMTTATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


231 


points 

s  tfiid 

L-izing. 
sense 

^uages 

th  the 

it,  and 

3se  are 

hardly 

Per  way 

lage  is 

it  may 

ckisely 

nitative 

r  other 

ivn   and 

chosen 

3  which 
sounds 

i  of  the 

3  many 

iknown 

,0  trace 

belong 

Irticular 
of  lan- 
^ogoncy 
lage  of 
[gon   of 
ll,  they 
111  have 
lut  still 
them, 
to  be 
ion  of 
uld  be 
ignized 


languages  and  dialects  of  the  world.  In  puch  a  Dictionary 
of  Sound- Words,  half  the  cases  cited  mi^ht  very  likely  be 
worthless,  but  the  collection  would  afford  the  practical 
means  of  expurgating  itself;  for  it  would  show  on  a  large 
scale  what  particular  sounds  have  manifested  their  fitness  to 
convey  particular  ideas,  by  having  been  repeatedly  chosen 
among  different  races  to  conve}-^  them. 

Attempts  to  explain  as  far  as  may  be  the  primary  forma- 
tion of  speech,  by  tracing  out  in  detail  such  processes  as 
have  been  here  described,  are  likely  to  increase  our  know^- 
ledge  by  sure  and  steady  steps  wherever  imagination  does 
not  get  the  better  of  sober  comparison  of  facts.  But  there 
is  one  side  of  this  problem  of  the  Origin  of  Language  on 
which  such  studies  have  by  no  means  an  encouraging  effect. 
Much  of  the  popular  interest  in  such  matters  is  centred  in 
the  question,  whether  the  known  languages  of  the  world 
have  their  source  in  one  or  many  primiieval  tongues.  On 
this  subject  the  opinions  of  the  philologists  who  have  com- 
pared the  greatest  number  of  langunges  are  utterly  at 
variance,  nor  has  an}'  one  brought  forward  a  bod}'  of  philo- 
logical evidence  strong  and  du'ect  enough  to  make  anything 
beyond  mere  vague  opinion  justifiable.  Now  such  pro- 
cesses as  the  growth  of  imitative  or  s}'mbolic  words  form  a 
part,  be  it  small  or  large,  of  the  Origin  of  Language,  but 
they  are  by  no  means  restricted  to  any  particular  place  or 
period,  and  are  indeed  more  or  less  in  activity  now.  Their 
operation  on  any  two  dialects  ot  one  language  will  be  to 
introduce  in  each  a  number  of  new  and  independent  words, 
and  words  even  suspected  of  having  been  formed  in  this 
direct  way  become  valueless  as  proof  of  genealogical  con- 
nexion between  the  languages  in  which  they  are  found. 
The  test  of  such  genealogical  connexion  must,  in  fact,  be 
generally  narrowed  to  such  words  or  grammatical  forms  aa 
have  become  so  far  conventional  in  sound  and  sense,  that 
we  cannot  suppose  two  tribes  to  have  arrived  at  them 
independently,  and  therefore  consider  that  both  must  have 
inherited  them  from  a  common  source.     Thus  the  intro- 


■ll 


i     U 


lU^I 


:in-2 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


■f; 


! 


Auction  of  new  sound-words  tends  to  make  it  practically  of 
less  and  less  consequence  to  a  language  what  its  original 
stock  of  words  at  starting  may  have  been  ;  and  the  philo- 
logist's extension  of  his  knowledge  of  such  direct  formations 
must  compel  him  to  strip  off  more  and  more  of  any  lan- 
guage, as  being  possibl}'  of  later  growth,  before  he  can  set 
himself  to  argue  upon  such  a  residuum  as  may  have  come 
by  direct  inheritance  from  times  of  primreval  speech. 

In  concluding  this  survey,  some  general  considerations 
suggest  themselves  as  to  the  nature  and  first  beginnings  of 
language.  In  studying  the  means  of  expression  among 
men  in  stages  of  mental  culture  far  below  our  own,  one  of 
our  first  needs  is  to  clear  our  minds  of  the  kind  of  supersti- 
tious veneration  with  which  articulate  speech  has  so  com- 
monly been  treated,  as  though  it  were  not  merely  the 
principal  .ut  the  sole  means  of  uttering  thought.  We  must 
■cease  to  measure  the  historical  importance  of  emotional 
exclamations,  of  gesture-signs,  and  of  picture-writing,  by 
their  comparative  insignificance  in  modern  civilized  life,  but 
must  bring  ourselves  to  associate  the  articulate  words  of  the 
dictionary  in  one  group  with  cries  and  gestures  and  pictures, 
as  being  all  of  them  means  of  manifesting  outwardly  the 
inward  workings  of  the  mind.  Such  an  admission,  it  must 
be  observed,  is  far  from  being  a  mere  detail  of  scientific 
classification.  It  has  really  a  most  important  bearing  on 
the  problem  of  the  Origin  of  Language.  For  as  the 
reasons  are  mostly  dark  to  us,  why  particular  words  are 
currently  vsed  to  express  particular  ideas,  language  has 
come  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  mystery,  and  either  occult 
philosophical  causes  have  been  called  in  to  explain  its 
phenomena,  or  else  the  endowment  of  man  with  the  facul- 
ties of  thought  and  utterance  has  been  deemed  insufficient, 
and  a  special  revelation  has  been  demanded  to  put  into  his 
mouth  the  vocabulary  of  a  particular  language.  In  the 
debate  which  has  been  carried  on  for  ages  over  this  much- 
vexed  problem,  the  saying  in  the  *  Kratylos  '  comes  back  to 
our  minds  again  and  again,  where  Sokrates  describes  the 


EMOTIONAL    AND     IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


23:} 


I    W 


giiial 
ihilo- 
itiona 
y  lan- 
an  set 
come 

rations 

ings  of 

among 

,  one  of 

apersti- 

30  com- 

•ely   the 

,Ve  must 

motional 

iting,  by 
life,  biit 

Ids  of  the 
pictm'es, 

|avdly  the 
it  mnst 
scientific 
saving  on 
•   as   the 
ords  are 
rviage  has 
[ler  occult 
iplain   its 
|the  facul- 
isufficient, 
[it  into  his 
In  the 
|his  n\uch- 
|es  back  to 
icribes  the 


etymologists  who  release  themselves  from  their  difficultici-; 
as  to  the  origin  of  words  by  saying  that  the  first  words  weio 
divinely  made,  and  therefore  right,  just  as  the  tragedians, 
wlien  they  are  in  perplexity,  fly  to  their  machinery  and 
bring  in  tlie  gods.^  Now  I  think  that  those  who  soberly 
contemplate  the  operation  of  cries,  groans,  laughs,  and 
other  emotional  utterances,  as  to  which  some  considerations 
have  been  here  brouglit  forward,  will  admit  that,  at  least, 
our  present  crude  understanding  of  this  kind  of  expression 
woukl  lead  us  to  class  it  among  the  natural  actions  of  man's 
body  and  mind.  Certainly,  no  one  who  understands  any- 
thing of  the  gesture-language  or  of  picture-writing  would 
be  justified  in  regarding  either  as  due  to  occult  causes,  or 
to  any  supernatural  interference  with  the  course  of  man's 
mtellectual  development.  Their  cause  evidently  lies  in 
r  itural  operations  of  the  human  mind,  not  such  as  were 
ctfective  in  some  long  past  condition  of  humanity  and  liave 
since  disappeared,  but  in  processes  existing  amongst  us, 
which  we  can  understand  and  even  practise  for  ourselves. 
When  we  study  the  pictures  and  gestures  with  which 
savages  and  the  deaf-and-dumb  express  their  minds,  we  can 
mostly  see  at  a  glance  the  direct  relation  between  the  out- 
ward sign  and  the  inward  thought  whi(ih  it  makes  mpiiifest. 
We  may  see  the  idea  of  "  sleep  "  shown  in  gesture  by  the 
head  with  shut  eyes,  leant  heavily  against  the  open  hand  ; 
or  the  idea  of  "  running  "  by  the  attitude  of  the  runner, 
with  chest  forward,  mouth  half  oyien,  elbows  and  shoulders 
well  back  ;  or  "  candle  "  bj'  the  straight  forefinger  held  up, 
and  as  it  were  blown  out;  or  "salt"  by  the  imitated  act 
of  sprinkling  it  with  thumb  and  finger.  The  figures  of  the 
child's  picture-book,  the  sleeper  and  the  runner,  the  candle 
and  the  salt-cellar,  show  their  purport  by  the  same  sort  of 
evident  relation  between  thought  and  sign.  We  so  far 
understand  the  nature  of  these  modes  of  utterance,  that  we 
are  ready  ourselves  to  express  thought  after  thought  by  such 

*  Plato  Cratylu8.  90. 


::Hi 


H'i 


"lika 


"TT-,  ,  -TTSt.-.-.M.JViJB  KSTOOM 


234 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


Ill 


!i  I, 


li  i    'i 


I J        I 


means,  so  that  those  who  see  our  signs  shall  perceive  our 
meaning. 

When,  however,  encouraged  by  our  ready  success  in 
making  out  the  nature  and  action  of  these  ruder  methods, 
we  turn  to  the  higher  art  of  speech,  and  ask  how  such  and 
such  words  have  come  to  express  such  and  such  thoughts, 
we  find  ourselves  face  to  face  with  an  immense  problem,  as 
3'et  but  in  small  part  solved.  The  success  of  investigation 
has  indeed  been  enough  to  encourage  us  to  push  vigorously 
forward  in  the  research,  but  the  present  explorations  have 
not  extended  bej'ond  corners  and  patches  of  an  elsewhere 
unknown  field.  Still  the  results  go  far  to  warrant  us  in 
associating  expression  bj'  gestures  and  pictures  with  articu- 
late language  as  to  principles  of  original  formation,  much  as 
men  associate  them  in  actual  life  by  using  gesture  and  word 
at  once.  Of  course,  articulate  speech,  in  its  far  more 
complex  and  elaborate  development,  has  taken  up  devices 
to  which  the  more  simple  and  ruue  means  of  communication 
oft'er  nothing  comparable.  Still,  language,  so  far  as  its 
constitution  is  understood,  seems  to  have  been  developed 
like  writing  or  nmsic,  like  hunting  or  fire-making,  by  the 
exercise  of  purely  human  faculties  in  purely  human  ways. 
This  state  of  things  by  no  means  belongs  exclusively  to 
rudimentary  philological  operations,  such  as  the  choosing 
expressive  sounds  to  name  corresponding  ideas  by.  In  the 
higher  departments  of  speech,  where  words  already  existing 
are  turned  to  account  to  express  new  meanings  and  shade 
off  new  distinctions,  we  find  these  ends  attained  by  con- 
trivances ranging  from  extreme  dexterity  down  to  utter 
clumsiness.  For  a  single  instance,  one  great  means  of 
giving  new  meaning  to  old  sound  is  metaphor,  which 
transfers  ideas  from  hearing  to  seeing,  from  touching  to 
thinking,  from  the  concrete  of  one  kind  to  the  abstract  of 
another,  and  can  thus  make  almost  anything  in  the  world 
help  to  describe  or  suggest  anything  else.  What  the 
German  philosopher  described  as  the  relation  of  a  cow  to  a 
comet,  that  both  have   tails,   is   enough   and   more   than 


1  I 


l( 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


2.35 


,    \ 


our 

s  in 
lods, 
I  and 
gilts, 
m,  as 
ration 
L-ously 
i  have 
jwlieve 
us  in 
articvi- 
\ucli  as 
id  word 
X  more 
devices 
nication 
J  as  its 
iveloped 
;,  by  tlie 
|ui  ways, 
iively  to 
[cboosing 
In  the 
existing 
nd  shade 
by  con- 
to  utter 
[means  of 
^Y,   which 
Liciiing  to 
abstract  of 
the  worhl 
[what  the 
a  cow  to  a 
QXQ   than 


enough  for  the  language-maker.  It  struck  the  Australians, 
when  they  saw  a  European  book,  that  it  opened  and  shut 
like  a  mussel-shell,  and  they  began  accordingly  to  call 
books  "mussels"  {muyum).  The  sight  of  a  steam  engine 
may  suggest  a  whole  group  of  such  transitions  in  our  own 
language;  the  steam  passes  along  "fifes"  or  "trumpets," 
that  is,  pipes  or  tubes,  and  enters  by  "folding-doors"  or 
valves,  to  push  a  "  pestle  "  or  piston  up  and  down  in  a 
"  roller  "  or  cylinder,  while  the  light  pours  from  the  furnace 
in  "  staves  "  or  "  poles,"  that  is,  in  rays  or  beams.  The 
dictionaries  are  full  of  cases  compared  with  which  such  as 
these  are  plain  and  straightforward.  Indeed,  the  processes 
b}'  which  words  have  really  come  into  existence  may  often 
enough  remind  us  of  the  game  of  "  What  is  my  thought 
like  ?  "  When  one  knows  the  answer,  it  is  easy  enough  to 
see  what  junketting  and  cathedral  canons  have  to  do  with 
reeds;  Latin  j'tmcws  "a  reed,"  Low  Latin  juncata,  "  cheese 
made  in  a  reed-basket,"  Italian  giuncata,  "  cream  cheese  in 
a  rush  frail,"  French,  joncade  and  English  junket,  which  are 
preparations  of  cream,  and  lastly  junketting  parties  where 
such  delicacies  are  eaten ;  Greek  Kuvri,  "  reed,  cane," 
KuvSiv,  "  measure,  rule,"  thence  canonicus,  "  a  clerk  under 
the  ecclesiastical  rule  or  canon."  But  who  could  guess  the 
history  of  these  words,  who  did  not  happen  to  know  these 
intermediate  links  ? 

Yet  there  is  about  this  process  of  derivation  a  thoroughly 
human  artificial  character.  When  we  know  the  whole  facts 
of  any  case,  we  can  generally  understand  it  at  once,  and  see 
that  we  might  have  done  the  same  ourselves  had  it  come  in 
our  way.  And  the  same  thing  is  true  of  the  processes  of 
making  sound-words  detailed  in  these  chapters.  Such  a 
view  is,  however,  in  no  way  inconsistent  with  the  attempt 
to  generalise  upon  these  processes,  and  to  state  them  as 
phases  of  the  development  of  language  among  mankind.  If 
certain  men  under  certain  circumstances  produce  certain 
results,  then  we  may  at  least  expect  that  other  men  much 
resembling  these  and  placed  under  roughly  similar  circum- 


I     ij 


i,.; 


vm 


rvemimmmMm 


\i  .      I 


'2:J6 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGR. 


i  '!;' 


stances  will  produce  more  or  less  like  results ;  and  this  has 
been  shown  over  and  over  again  in  these  pages  to  be  what 
really  happens.  Now  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt's  view  that 
language  is  an  "  organism  "  has  been  considered  a  great 
step  in  philological  speculation ;  and  so  far  as  it  has  led 
students  to  turn  their  minds  to  the  search  after  general 
laws,  no  doubt  it  has  been  so.  But  it  has  also  caused  an 
increase  of  vague  thinking  and  talking,  and  thereby  no 
small  darkening  of  counsel.  Had  it  been  meant  to  say  that 
human  thought,  language,  and  action  generally,  are  organic 
in  their  nature,  and  work  under  fixed  laws,  this  would  be  a 
very  different  matter;  but  this  is  distinctly  not  what  is 
meant,  and  the  ver}'  object  of  calling  language  an  organism 
is  to  keep  it  apart  from  mere  human  arts  and  contrivances. 
It  was  a  hateful  thing  to  Humboldt's  mind  to  **  bring  down 
speech  to  a  mere  operation  of  the  understanding."  "  Man," 
he  says,  "  does  not  so  much  form  language,  as  discern  with 
a  kind  of  joyous  wonder  its  developments,  coming  forth  as 
of  themselves."  Yet,  if  the  practical  shifts  by  which  words 
are  shaped  or  applied  to  fit  new  meanings  are  not  devised  by 
an  operation  of  the  imderst;n)ding,  we  ought  consistently  to 
carry  the  stratagems  of  the  soldier  in  the  field,  or  the  con- 
trivances of  the  workman  at  his  bench,  back  into  the  dark 
regions  of  instinct  and  involuntary  action.  That  the  actions 
of  individual  men  combine  to  produce  results  which  may  be 
set  down  in  those  general  statements  of  fact  which  we  call 
laws,  may  be  stated  once  again  as  one  of  the  main  proposi- 
tions of  the  Science  of  Culture.  But  the  nature  of  a  fact  is 
not  altered  by  its  being  classed  in  common  with  others  of 
the  same  kind,  and  a  man  is  not  less  the  intelligent  inventor 
of  a  new  word  or  a  new  metaphor,  because  twenty  other 
intelligent  inventors  elsewhere  may  have  fallen  on  a  similar 
expedient. 

The  theory  that  the  original  forms  of  language  are  to  be 
referred  to  a  low  or  savage  condition  of  culture  among  the 
remotely  ancient  human  race,  stands  in  general  consistency 
with  the  known  facts  of  philology.     The  causes  which  have 


)■■ 


EMOTIONAL    AND    lAITTATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


2:]7 


lilar 


produced  language,  so  far  as  they  are  understood,  are 
notable  for  that  childlike  simplicity  of  operation  which 
befits  the  infancy  of  human  civilization.  The  ways  in 
which  sounds  are  in  the  first  instance  chosen  and  arranwd 

O 

to  express  ideas,  are  practical  expedients  at  the  level  of 
nursery  philosophy.  A  child  of  five  years  old  could  catch 
the  meaning  of  imitative  sounds,  interjectional  words, 
symbolism  of  sex  or  distance  by  contrast  of  vowels.  Just 
as  no  one  is  likely  to  enter  into  the  real  nature  of  myth- 
ology who  has  not  the  keenest  appreciation  of  nursery  tales, 
so  the  spirit  in  which  we  guess  riddles  and  play  at 
children's  games  is  needed  to  appreciate  the  lower  phases  of 
language.  Such  a  state  of  things  agrees  with  the  opinion 
that  such  rudimentary  speech  had  its  origin  among  men 
while  in  a  childlike  intellectual  condition,  and  thus  the  self- 
expressive  branch  of  savage  language  affords  valuable 
materials  for  the  problem  of  primitive  speech.  If  we  look 
back  in  imagination  to  an  early  period  of  human  inter- 
course, where  gesture  and  self-expressive  utterance  may 
have  had  a  far  greater  comparative  importance  than  among 
ourselves,  such  a  conception  introduces  no  new  element 
into  the  problem,  for  a  state  of  things  more  or  less  answer- 
ing to  this  is  described  among  certain  low  saviige  tribes.  If 
we  turn  from  such  self-expressive  utterance,  to  tliat  part  of 
articulate  language  which  carries  its  sense  only  by  tradi- 
tional and  seemingly  arbitrary  custom,  we  shall  find  no 
contradiction  to  the  hj^pothesis.  Sound  carrying  direct 
meaning  may  be  taken  up  as  an  element  of  language, 
keeping  its  first  significance  recognizable  to  nations  yet 
unborn.  But  it  may  far  more  probably  become  by  wear  of 
sound  and  shift  of  sense  an  expressionless  symbol,  such  as 
might  have  been  chosen  in  pure  arbitrariness — a  philo- 
logical process  to  which  the  vocabularies  of  savage  dialects 
bear  full  witness.  In  the  course  of  the  development  of 
language,  such  traditional  words  with  merely  an  inherited 
meaning  have  in  no  small  measure  driven  into  the  back- 
ground   the    self-expressive   words,  just    as   the   Eastern 


»,  'I 


10, SI 

'Til 
'      1/ 


;■ 


A  ) 


ri 


'■ 
k 


ft 

I 


•—r. 


•■■  ■■■■W'-  ,-»w^  j.Eg«r--.-.ij.,i. n  m  .a  j....vPt  Mjm'HiLai^.'ii ii j.  -  - 


23S 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGB. 


1  l'i| 

i'  hi 


I  ■ 


i:  .;•,     t 


figures  2,  3,  4,  which  are  not  self- expressive,  have  driven 
into  the  background  the  Roman  numerals  II.,  III.,  IIII., 
which  are — this,  again,  is  an  operation  which  has  its  place 
in  savage  as  in  cultivated  speech.  Moreover,  to  look 
closely  at  language  as  a  practical  means  of  expressing 
thought,  is  to  face  evidence  of  no  slight  bearing  on  the 
history  of  civilization.  We  come  back  to  the  fact,  so  full  of 
suggestion,  that  the  languages  of  the  world  represent 
substantially  the  same  intellectual  art,  the  higher  nations 
indeed  gaining  more  expressive  power  than  the  lowest 
tribes,  yet  doing  this  not  by  introducing  new  and  more 
effective  central  principles,  but  by  mere  addition  and 
improvement  in  detail.  The  two  great  methods  of  naming 
thoughts  and  stating  their  relation  to  one  another,  viz., 
metaphor  and  syntax,  belong  to  the  infancy  of  human  ex- 
pression, and  are  as  thoroughly  at  home  in  the  language  of 
savages  as  of  j)hilosophers.  If  it  be  argued  that  this 
similarity  in  principles  of  language  is  due  to  savage  tribes 
having  descended  from  higher  culture,  carrying  down  with 
them  in  their  speech  the  relics  of  their  former  excellence, 
the  answer  is  that  linguistic  expedients  are  actually  worked 
out  with  as  much  originality,  and  more  extensively  if  not 
more  profitably,  among  savages  than  among  cultured  men. 
Take  for  example  the  Algonquin  system  of  compounding 
words,  and  the  vast  Esquimaux  scheme  of  grammatical 
inflexion.  Language  belongs  in  essential  principle  both  to 
low  grades  and  high  of  civilization,  to  which  should  its 
origin  be  attributed  ?  An  answer  may  be  had  by  comparing 
the  methods  of  language  with  the  work  it  has  to  do.  Take 
language  all  in  all  over  the  world,  it  is  obvious  that  the 
processes  by  which  words  are  made  and  adapted  have  far 
less  to  do  with  systematic  arrangement  and  scientific  classi- 
fication, than  with  mere  rough  and  ready  ingenuity  and  the 
great  rule  of  thumb.  Let  any  one  whose  vocation  it  is  to 
realize  philosophical  or  scientific  conceptions  and  to  express 
them  in  words,  ask  himself  whether  ordinary  language  is  an 
instrument  planned  for  such  purposes.     Of  course  it  is  not. 


ii 


EMOTIONAL    AND    IMITATIVE    LANGUAGE. 


289 


It  is  hard  to  say  which  is  the  more  striking,  the  want  of 
scientific  system  in  the  expression  of  thought  by  \\  ords,  or 
the  infinite  cleverness  of  detail  by  which  this  imperfection 
is  got  over,  so  that  he  who  has  an  idea  does  somehow  make 
sliift  to  get  it  clearly  in  words  before  his  own  and  other 
minds.  The  language  by  which  a  nation  with  highly 
developed  art  and  knowledge  and  sentiment  must  express 
its  thoughts  on  these  subjects,  is  no  apt  machine  devised 
for  such  special  work,  but  an  old  barbaric  engine  added  to 
and  altered,  patched  and  tinkered  into  some  sort  of  capa- 
bility. Ethnography  reasonably  accounts  at  once  for  thf> 
immense  power  and  the  manifest  weakness  of  language  as  i% 
means  of  expressing  modern  educated  thought,  by  treating 
it  as  an  original  product  of  low  culture,  gradually  adapted 
ty  ages  of  evolution  and  selection,  to  answer  more  or  less 
sufficiently  the  requirements  of  modem  civilization. 


'1 

;1 


fr! 


1  ■- 

\i 
i!' 

:Y: 

1  t". 

!>■■* 

1  r 

1!-' 

m 


.Is 


.1^1 


'•X 


!    I 


Tll^^.  ^» 


ir. 


■; 


n 


f  ■■■''■'   f 


!.:      i 


i      Vii':!!; 


CHAPTER    VII. 

THE    ART    OP    COUNTING. 

of  Number  derived  from  experience — State  of  Arithmetic  nmonw  un- 
civilized races — Small  extent  of  Numeral-words  anion^;  low  tril)es — 
Countin<{  by  fingers  and  toes— Hand-numeruls  show  derivation  of  Verbal 
reckoning  from  Gesture-counting — Etymology  of  Numerals — Quinary, 
Decimal,  and  Vigesimal  notations  of  the  world  derived  from  counting  on 
fingers  and  toes— Ad()j)ti()n  of  foreign  Numeral-words — Evidence  of 
development  of  Arithmetic  from  a  low  original  level  of  Culture. 

Mr.  J.  S.  Mill,  in  his  *  System  of  Logic,*  takes  occasion 
to  exiunine  the  foundations  of  the  art  of  arithmetic.  Agiiinst 
Dr.  "NVhewell,  who  had  maintained  that  such  propositions 
as  that  two  and  three  make  five  are  "  necessary  truths," 
containing  in  them  an  element  of  certainty  beyond  that 
which  mere  experience  can  give,  Mr.  ]\Iill  asserts  that  "  two 
and  one  are  equal  to  three "  expresses  merely  **  a  truth 
known  to  us  by  early  and  constant  experience  :  an  inductive 
truth;  and  such  truths  are  the  foundation  of  the  science  of 
Number.  The  fundamental  truths  of  that  science  all  rest  on 
the  evidence  of  sense ;  they  are  proved  by  showing  to  our 
eyes  and  our  fingers  that  any  given  number  of  objects,  ten 
balls  for  example,  may  by  separation  and  re-arrangement 
exhibit  to  our  senses  all  the  diflerent  sets  of  numbers  the  sum 
of  which  is  equal  to  ten.  All  the  improved  methods  of  teach- 
ing arithmetic  to  children  proceed  on  a  knowledge  of  this 
fact.  Ail  who  wish  to  carry  the  child's  mind  along  with 
them  in  learning  arithmetic ;  all  who  wish  to  teach 
numbers,  and  not  mere  ciphers — now  teach  it  through  the 
evidence  of  the  senses,  in  the  manner  we  have  described." 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTINO, 


241 


I  I 


ieach- 
f  tliis 
with 
teach 
fh  the 
ibed." 


Mr.  Mill's  argument  is  taken  from  the  mental  conditions  of 
people  among  whom  there  exists  a  highl}'  advanced  arilli- 
metic.  The  subject  is  also  one  to  be  advantageously 
studied  from  the  ethnographer's  point  of  view.  The  ex- 
amination of  the  methods  of  numeration  in  use  au^ong  the 
lower  races  not  onl}'  fully  bears  out  Mr.  Mill's  vie  v,  that 
our  knowledge  of  the  relations  of  numbers  is  basei  on 
actual  experiment,  but  it  enables  us  to  trace  the  art  of 
counting  to  its  source,  and  to  ascertain  by  what  stejis  it 
arose  in  the  world  among  particular  races,  and  probably 
among  all  mankind. 

In  our  advanced  system  of  numeration,  no  limit  is  known 
either  to  largeness  or  smallness.  The  philosopher  cannot 
conceive  the  formation  of  any  quantity  so  large  or  of  any 
atom  so  small,  but  the  arithmetician  can  keep  pace  with 
him,  and  can  define  it  in  a  simple  combination  of  written 
signs.  But  as  we  go  downwards  in  the  scale  of  culture,  we 
find  that  even  where  the  current  language  has  terms  for 
hundreds  and  thousands,  there  is  less  and  less  power  of 
forming  a  distinct  notion  of  large  numbers,  the  reckoner  is 
sooner  driven  to  his  fingers,  and  there  increases  among 
the  must  intelligent  that  numerical  indefiniteness  that  we 
notice  among  childre.i — if  there  were  not  a  thousand  people 
in  the  street  there  were  certainly  a  hundred,  at  any  rate 
there  were  twenty.  Strength  in  arithmetic  does  not,  it  is 
true,  vary  regularly  with  the  level  of  general  culture. 
Some  savage  or  barbaric  peoples  are  exceptionallj'  skilled 
in  numeration.  The  Tonga  Islanders  reall}'^  have  native 
numerals  up  to  100,000.  No*^^  content  even  with  this,  the 
French  explorer  Labillardiere  pressed  them  farther  and 
obtained  numerals  up  to  1000  billions,  Avliich  were  duly 
printed,  but  proved  on  later  examination  to  be  partly  non- 
sense-words and  partly  indelicate  expressions,^  so  that  the 
supposed  series  of  high  numerals  forms  at  once  a  littl? 
vocabulary  of  Tongan  indecencj^  and  a  warning  as  to  the 


Mariner,  'Tonga  Islands,'  vol  ii.  p.  '3'jO. 


1 


I  I 


!   I 


li! 


■j|.i 


VOL.    I. 


/ 


[!      Ill 


It 


I,   II 


242 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


probable  results  of  taking  down  unchecked  answers  from 
question-worried  savages.  In  West  Africa,  a  lively  and 
continual  habit  of  bargaining  has  developed  a  great  power 
of  arithmetic,  and  little  children  already  do  feats  of  compu- 
tation with  their  heaps  o.f  cowries.  Among  the  Yorubas  of 
Abeokuta,  to  say  "you  don't  know  nine  times  nine"  is 
actually  an  insulting  way  of  saying  "you  are  a  dunce." ^ 
This  is  an  extraordinary  proverb,  when  we  compare  it  with 
the  standard  which  our  corresponding  European  sayings  set 
for  the  limits  of  stupidity :  the  German  says,  "  he  can 
scarce  count  five  "  ;  the  Spaniard,  "  I  will  tell  you  how 
many  make  five  "  (cuantos  son  cinco) ;  and  we  have  the 
same  saw  in  England  : — 

"...  as  sure  as  I'm  alive, 

And  knowa  how  many  beans  make  five." 

A  Siamese  law-court  will  not  take  the  evidence  of  a  witness 
who  cannot  count  or  reckon  figures  up  to  ten ;  a  rule  which 
reminds  us  of  the  ancient  custom  of  Shrewsbury,  where  a 
person  was  deemed  of  age  when  he  knew  how  to  count  up  to 
twelve  pence. ^ 

Among  the  lowest  living  men,  the  savages  of  the  South 
American  forests  and  the  deserts  of  Australia,  5  is  actually 
found  to  be  a  number  which  the  languages  of  some  tribes  do 
not  know  by  a  special  word.  Not  only  have  travellers 
failed  to  get  from  them  names  for  numbers  above  2,  3,  or 
4,  but  the  opinion  that  these  are  the  real  limits  of  their 
numeral  series  is  strengthened  by  the  use  of  their  highest 
known  number  as  an  indefinite  term  for  a  great  many. 
Si)ix  and  Martins  say  of  the  low  tribes  of  Brazil,  "  They 
count  commonly  by  their  finger  joints,  so  up  to  three  only. 
Any  larger  number  they  express  by  the  word  '  many.*  "^   In 


•  Crowther,  '  Yoruba  Vocab.' ;  Burton,  '  W.  &  W.  from  W.  Africa,' p.  253. 
"  0  daju  daiiu,  o  ko  mo  essan  inessan. — You  (may  seem)  very  clever,  (but) 
you  can't  tell  9x9." 

^  Low  in  *Journ.  Ind.  Archip.,' vol,  i.  p.  408;  Year- Books  Edw.  I,  (xx. — i. 
ed.  Horwood,  p.  220. 

^  Spixaud  Martius,  '  Reise  in  Brazilien,'  p.  387. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTINO. 


243 


IS 


a  Puri  vocabulary  the  numerals  are  given  as  1.  omi;  2. 
curiri ;  3.  prica,  "many":  in  a  Botocudo  vocabulary,  1. 
viokenani;  2.  vriiliii,  "many."  The  numeration  of  the 
Tasmanians  is,  according  to  Jorgenson,  1.  parmery ;  2. 
calahaicd ;  more  than  2,  cinlia  ;  as  Backhouse  puts  it,  they 
count  "  one,  two,  plenty "  ;  but  an  observer  who  had 
specially  good  opportunities.  Dr.  INIilligan,  gives  a  word 
found  among  them  for  5,  which  we  shall  recur  to.^  Mr. 
Oldfield  (writing  especially  of  Western  tribes)  says,  "  The 
New  Hollanders  have  no  names  for  nu.ibers  bej'ond  iro. 
The  Watchandie  scale  of  notation  is  co-ctc-oii  (one),  ii-tau- 
ra  (two),  hool-thn  (many),  and  hool-tha-hat  ('ery  many). 
If  absolutely  required  to  express  the  numbvrs  thrf  or  fou", 
they  ^iiy  ib-tar-ra  coo-tc-oo  to  indicate  the  former  numbe 
and  u-tar-rau-tar-ra  to  denote  the  latter."  That  is  to  ay, 
their  names  for  one,  two,  three,  and  four,  are  eq  "i..  lent  to 
"one,"  "two,"  "two-one,"  "two-two."  Pr.  Lang's 
numerals  from  Queensland  are  just  the  same  in  principle, 
tliough  the  words  are  different:  1.  (jiinar ;  2.  hurla  ;  3. 
haiia-ganar,  "two-one";  4.  hurla-hurla,  "two-two"; 
korumha,  "  more  than  four,  much,  great."  The  Kamilaroi 
dialect,  though  with  the  same  2  as  the  last,  improves  upon 
it  by  having  an  independent  3,  and  with  the  aid  of  this  it 
reckons  as  far  as  6  :  1.  mal ;  2.  hiilarr ;  3.  (jiilibi ;  4.  hiilarr- 
biilarr,  "two-two";  5.  hulagidiha,  "two-three";  6.  (jiiliba- 
guliha  "  three-three."  These  Aust:  l''>n  examples  are  at 
least  evidence  of  a  very  scanty  as  w-;!..  as  clumsy  numeral 
system  among  certain  tribes.^  Yet  here  again  higher  forms 
will  have  to  be  noticed,  which  in  -ine  district  at  least  carry 
the  native  numerals  up  to  15  or  'iO. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  because  a  savage  tribe  haa 
no  current  words  for'  numbers  above  3  or  5  or  so,  that 
therefore  they  cannot  count  beyond  this.     It  appears  that 


i  I 


t 

i 


(XX.— 1. 


*  Bouwick,  'Tasmanians,' p.  143;  Backhouse,  'Narr.'p,  104  ;  Milligun  in 
Papers,  etc.  Roy.  Soc.  Tasmania,  vol.  iii.  part  ii.     1859. 

»  Oldfield  in  Tr.  Eth.  Soc.  vol.  iii.  p.  291;  Lang,  'Queensland,'  p.  433  | 
Latham,  '  Comp.  Phil.'  p.  352.     Other  terms  in  Bonwick,  1.  c. 


■■■''  i 


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it! 


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Mr 
h 


244 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


they  can  and  do  count  considerably  farther,  but  it  is  by 
falling  back  on  a  lower  and  ruder  method  of  expression 
than  sj)eech — the  gesture-language.  The  place  in  in- 
tellectual development  held  by  the  art  of  counting  on 
one's  fingers,  is  well  marked  in  the  description  which 
Massieu,  the  Abbe  Sicard's  deaf-and-dumb  pupil,  gives  of 
his  notion  of  numbers  in  his  comparatively  untaught 
childhood  :  "  I  knew  the  numbers  before  my  instruction, 
my  fingers  had  taught  me  them.  I  did  not  know  the 
cii)hers ;  I  counted  on  my  fingers,  and  when  the  number 
passed  10  I  made  notches  on  a  bit  '^f  wood."^  It  is  thus 
that  all  savage  tribes  have  been  taught  arithmetic  by  their 
fingors.  Mr.  Oldfield,  after  giving  the  account  just  quoted 
of  the  capability  of  the  Watchandie  language  to  reach  4 
by  numerals,  goes  on  to  describe  the  means  by  which  the 
tribe  contrive  to  deal  with  a  harder  problem  in  numeration. 
**I  once  wished  to  ascertain  the  exact  number  of  natives 
who  had  been  slain  on  a  certain  occasion.  The  individual 
of  whom  I  made  the  enquiry,  began  to  think  over  the 
names  ....  assigning  one  of  his  fingers  to  each,  and  it 
was  not  until  after  many  failures,  and  consequent  fresh 
starts,  that  he  was  able  to  express  so  high  a  number,  which 
he  at  length  did  by  holding  up  his  hand  three  times,  thus 
giving  me  to  understand  that  fifteen  was  the  answer  to  this 
most  diflicult  arithmetical  question."  Of  the  aborigines  of 
Victoria,  Mr.  Stanbridge  says:  "  Th(  y  have  no  name  for 
numerals  above  two,  but  by  repetition  they  count  to  five ; 
they  also  record  the  days  of  the  moon  by  means  of  the 
fingers,  the  bones  and  joints  of  the  arms  and  the  head."' 
The  Bororos  of  Brazil  reckon:  1.  couai;  2.  macoiuii;  3. 
oiiai;  and  then  go  on  counting  on  their  fingers,  repeating 
this  ouai.^  Of  course  it  no  more  follows  among  savages 
than  among  ourselves  that,  because  a  man  counts  on  his 

'  SicarJ,  '  TWoiio  des  Sigiies  pour  I'lnstruction  des  Sourds-Muets,*  vol.  ii 
p.  634. 
^  Stanbridge  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  i.  p.  304. 
•  Martins,  'Gloss.  Bi'usil,'p.  16, 


ijf^--  i 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


245 


fingers,  his  laiigu.ige  must  be  wanting  in  words  to  express 
the  number  he  wishes  to  reckon.     For  example  it  waamoticed 
that  when  natives  of  Kamchatka  were  set    to  count,  they 
would  reckon  all  their  fingers,  and  then  all  their  toes,  so 
getting  up  to  20,  and  then  would  ask,  "  What  are  we  to  do 
next  ?  "     Yet  it  was  found  on  examination  that  numbers  up 
to  100  existed  in  their  language.^     Travellers  notice  the  use 
of  finger-counting  among  tribes  who  can,  if  they  choose, 
speak  the  number,  and  who  either  silently  count  it  upon  their 
fingers,  or  very  usually  accompany  the  word  with  the  action ; 
nor  indeed  are  either  of  these  modes  at  all  unfamiliar  in 
modern  Europe.     Let  Father  Gumilla,  one  of  the   early 
Jesuit  missionaries  in  South  America,  describe  for  us  the 
relation  of  gesture  to  speech  in  counting,  and  at  the  same 
time  bring  to  our  minds  very  remarkable  examples  (to  be 
paralleled  elsewhere)  of  the  action  of  consensus,  whereby 
conventional  rules  become  fixed  among  societies  of  men, 
even  in  so  simple  an  art  as  thr.t  of  counting  on  one's  fingers. 
"Nobody    among    ourselves,'    he    remarks,    "except    in- 
cidentally, would  say  for  instance   'one,*   'two,*  etc.,  and 
give  the  number  on  his  fingers  as  well,  by  touching  them 
with  the  otlier  hand.     Exactl}'  the  contrary  happens  among 
Indians.     They  say,  for  instance,    *  give  me  one   pair   of 
scissors,'  and  forthwith  they  raise  one  finger  ;  *  give  me  two,* 
and  at  once  they  raise  two,  and  so  on.     They  would  never 
say  *  five  *   without   showing  a  hand,  never  *  ten  *  without 
holding  out  both,  never  *  twenty '  without  adding  up  tlie 
fingers,  placed  opposite  to  the  toes.     Moreover,  the  mode 
of  showing  the  numbers  with  the  fingers  differs   in  each 
nation.      To   avoid  prolixity,  I  give  as  an   example   tlie 
number  '  three.'     The  Otomacs  to  say  '  three '  unite  the 
thumb,  forefinger,  and  middle  finger,  keeping  the  others 
down.      The  TamaUi'.cs   show  the   little   finger,   the  ring 
finger,  and   the   middle   finger,  and  close   the  other  two. 
The    Maipures,  lastly,  raise   the   fore,  middle,    and  ring 

*  Eracheuinuikow,  '  Eaiutchatka, '  p.  17. 


ii 


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I.'  .' 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


fingers,  keeping  the  other  two  hidden."^  Throughout  the 
world,  the  general  relation  between  finger-counting  and 
word-counting  may  be  stated  as  follows.  For  readiness 
and  for  ease  of  apprehension  of  numbers,  a  palpable 
arithmetic,  such  as  is  worked  on  finger-joints  or  fingers,^  or 
heaps  of  pebbles  or  beans,  or  the  more  artificial  contri- 
vances of  the  rosary  or  the  abacus,  has  so  great  an 
advantage  over  reckoning  in  words  as  almost  necessarily 
to  precede  it.  Thus  not  only  do  we  find  finger-counting 
among  savages  and  uneducated  men,  carrying  on  a  part  of 
their  mental  operations  where  language  is  only  parti}'  able 
to  follow  it,  but  it  also  retains  a  place  and  an  undoubted 
use  among  the  most  cultured  nations,  as  a  preparation  for 
and  means  of  acquiring  higher  arithmetical  methods. 

Now  there  exists  valid  evidence  to  prove  that  a  child 
learning  to  count  upon  its  fingers  does  in  a  way  reproduce 
a  process  of  the  mental  history  of  the  human  race  ;  that  in 
fact  men  counted  upon  their  fingers  before  they  found 
words  for  the  numbers  the}'  thus  expressed;  that  in  this 
department  of  culture,  A\'ord-language  not  only  followed 
Gesture-language,  but  actually  grew  out  of  it.  The  evi- 
dence in  question  is  principally  that  of  language  itself, 
which  shows  that,  among  many  and  distant  tribes,  men 
wanting  to  express  5  in  words  called  it  simply  b}'  their 
name  for  the  liand  which  thej'^  held  up  to  denote  it,  that  in 
like  manner  they  said  two  hands  or  half  a  man  to  denote 
10,  that  the  word /ooit  carried  on  the  reckoning  up  to  15, 


m 


*  Gumilla,  '  ITistoria  del  Orenoco,'  vol.  iii.  cli.  xlv.  ;  Pott,  •  Zalilniethodp,' 
p.  16. 

2  The  KaKtcru  brokers  have  used  ''or  ages,  and  still  use,  the  method  of 
Bccrotly  iudicatiiij;  iiumlifcrs  to  one  another  in  bargaining,  "by  snipping 
fingers  under  a  clotii."  "  iivery  joynt  and  every  fmgor  hath  his  signitiea- 
tion,"  as  an  old  traveller  says,  and  the  systcn  seems  a  more  or  less  artificial 
development  of  ordinary  finger-counting,  the  thumb  and  little  finger  stretched 
out,  and  the  other  fingers  closed,  .standing  for  6  or  GO,  the  addition  of  the 
fourth  finger  making  7  or  70,  and  so  on.  It  is  said  that  between  two  brokers 
settling  a  price  by  thus  snijijiing  with  tlie  fingers,  cleverness  in  bargaining, 
offering  a  liltle  more,  hesitating,  ex[ivessing  an  obstinate  refusal  to  go  farther, 
etc.,  comes  out  just  as  in  challeriug  in  wcrds. 


\^Z\ 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


247 


.   s 


khodp,' 

Itliod  of 

Jgnit'u'a- 

rtificial 

Iretched 

\i  of  the 

jrokers 


and  to  20,  wliiou  they  described  in  words  as  in  gesture  by 
the  hands  and  feet  together,  or  as  one  man,  and  that 
lastl}',  by  various  expressions  referring  directly  to  the 
gestures  of  counting  on  the  fingers  and  toes,  they  gave 
names  to  these  and  intermediate  numerals.  As  a  definite 
term  is  wanted  to  describe  significant  numerals  of  this  class, 
it  may  be  convenient  to  call  them  "  hand-numerals  "  or 
"  digit-numerals."  A  selection  of  typical  instances  will 
serve  to  make  it  probable  that  this  ingenious  device  was  not, 
at  any  rate  generally,  copied  from  one  tribe  b}'  another  or 
inherited  from  a  common  source,  but  that  its  working  out 
with  original  character  and  curiously  varying  detail  displays 
the  recurrence  of  a  similar  but  independent  process  of 
mental  development  among  various  races  of  man. 

Father  Gilij,  describing  the  arithmetic  of  the  Tamanacs 
on  the  Orinoco,  gives  their  numerals  up  to  4  :  when  they 
come  to  5,  they  express  it  by  the  word  amgnaitoiie,  wliich 
being  translated  means  "  a  whole  hand  "  ;  6  is  expressed  by 
a  term  which  translates  the  proper  gesture  into  words, 
itacono  amrjnapond  teiinitpe  "  one  of  tlie  other  hand,"  and 
so  on  up  to  9.  Coming  to  10,  the}'  give  it  in  words  as 
amijna  acciionare  "  both  hands."  To  denote  11  they  stretch 
out  both  the  hands,  and  adding  the  foot  they  say  j^///Yt/ - 
po7ia  teiln'djje  **  one  to  the  foot,"  and  so  on  up  to  15,  which 
is  iptditone  "  a  whole  foot."  Next  follows  16,  "one  to  the 
other  foot,"  and  so  on  to  20,  tevin  itoto,  "  one  Indian  ;  "  21, 
itaconb  ituto  jamgnar  bond  terinitpe  "  one  to  the  hands  of  the 
other  Indian  ;  "  40,  acciache  itoto,  "  two  Indians,"  and  so  on 
for  60,  80,  100,  "three,  four,  five  Indians,"  and  beyond  if 
needful.  South  America  is  remarkably  rich  in  such  evi- 
dence of  an  early  condition  of  finger-counting  recorded  in 
spoken  language.  Among  its  many  other  languages  which 
have  recognizable  digit-numerals,  the  Cayriri,  Tupi,  Abi- 
pone,  and  Carib  rival  the  Tamanac  in  their  systematic  way 
of  working  out  "hand,"  "hands,"  "foot,"  "feet,"  etc. 
Others  show  slighter  traces  of  the  same  process,  where,  for 
instance,  the  numerals  5  or  10  are  found  to  be  connected 


I 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING, 


with  words  for  "hiind,"  etc.,  as  when  the  Omagua  uses  jJMrf, 
*'  hand,"  for  5,  and  reduplicates  this  into  upapua  for  10.    In 
some    South  American  languages  a    man  is   reckoned  by 
fingers  and  toes  up  to  20,  while  in  contrast  to  this,  there  are 
two  languages  which  display  a  miserably  low  mental  state, 
the  man  counting  only  one  hand,  thus  stopping  short  at  5 ; 
the  Juri  ghomen  apa  "  one  man,"  stands  for  5  ;  the  Cayriri 
ihichu   is   used   to   mean   both   "  person "   and  5.      Digit- 
numerals  are  not  confined  to  tribes  standing,  like  these,  low 
or  high  within  the  limits  of  savagery.  The  Muyscas  of  Bogota 
were  among  the  more  civilized  native  races  of  America, 
ranking  with  the  Peruvians  in  their  culture,   yet  cUe  same 
method  of  formation  which  appears  in  the  Luijr  lage   of  the 
rude  Tamanacs  is  to  be  traced  in  that  of  the  Muyscas,  who, 
when  they  come  to  11,  12,  13,  counted  quihicha  ata,  bosa, 
anica,   i.e.,    "foot   one,  two,  three. "^     To  turn  to  North 
America,  Cranz,  the  Moravian  missionary,   thus  describes 
about  a  century  ago  the  numeration  of  the  Greenlanders. 
"  Their  numerals,"  he  says,  "go  not  far,  and  with  them  the 
proverb  holds  that    the}'  can  scarce    count  five,  for  they 
reckon  by  the  five  fingers  and  then  get  the  help  of  the  toes 
on  their  feet,  and  so  with  labour  bring  out  twenty."     The 
modern  Greenland  grammar  gives  the  numerals  much  as 
Cranz  does,  but  more  fully.     The  word  for  5  is  tatdlimat, 
which  there  is  some  ground  for  supposing  to  have  once 
meant  "  hand  ;  "  6  is  arJinek-dttauHck,  "  on  the  other  hand 
one,"  or  more  shortly  arjiiiujdiit,  "  those  which  have  on  the 
other  hsind  ;  "   7  is  arjinek-mardliik,  "  on  the  other  hand 
two  ;  "  13  is  arkanek-pimiasut,  "  on  the  first  foot  three  ;" 
18  is  arfcrsaxek-'phigasut,  "on  the  other  foot  three;"  when 
they  reach  20,  they  can  say  inuk  ndcdliigo,  "a  man  ended," 
or  inii})  avatai  )idvdlugit,  "  the  man's  outer  members  ended;" 
and    thus    by   counting   several    men   they   reach    higher 


Gilij ;  '  Sa^gio  di  Storia  Americana,'  vol.  ii.  p.  332  (Tamanac,  Miiyimro). 
Martius,  'Gloss.  Brasil.'  (Cayiiri,  Tiipi,  Carib,  Onia^ua,  Jiiri,  Guaclii,  Coretu, 
Clu'ientcs,  Maxuruua,  Carijmua,  Cauixana,  Carajas,  Coroado,  etc.) ;  Dobriz- 
liotTer,  '  Abipones,'  vol.  ii.  p.  168  ;  Humboldt,  '  Monuiucus,'  pi.  xliv.  (Muyuca). 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


24.  J) 


numbers,  thus  expressing,  for  example,  53  as  ini/p  'p'oi'J''- 
jugsdne  arkanek-p'uigasut,  "  on  the  third  man  on  the  first  font 
three."  ^  If  we  pass  from  the  rude  Greenlanders  to  the  com- 
paratively civilized  Aztecs,  we  shall  find  on  the  Northern  as 
on  the  Southern  continent  traces  of  earl\'  finger-numeration 
surviving  among  higher  races.  The  Mexican  names  for  the 
first  four  numerals  are  as  obscure  in  etymology  as  our  own. 
But  when  we  come  to  5  we  find  this  expressed  by  macuilli, 
and  as  ma  (ma-itl)  means  "  hand,"  and  cuUoi  **  to  paint  or 
depict,"  it  is  likely  that  the  word  for  5  may  have  meant 
something  like  "  hand  depicting."  In  10,  vuttldctU,  the 
word  ma,  "  hand,"  appears  again,  while  tlactli  means  half,  and 
is  represented  in  the  Mexican  picture-writings  b}'  the  figure 
of  half  a  man  from  the  waist  upward  ;  thus  it  appears  that 
the  Aztec  10  means  the  "hand-half"  of  a  man,  just  as 
among  the  Towka  Indians  of  South  America  10  is  expressed 
as  "half  a  man,"  a  whole  man  being  20.  When  the  Aztecs 
reach  20  they  call  it  ccmyoalli,  "  one  counting,"  with  evi- 
dently the  same  meaning  as  elsewhere,  one  whole  man, 
fingers  and  toes. 

Among  races  of  the  lower  culture  elsewhere,  similar  facts 
are  to  be  observed.  The  Tasmanian  language  again  shows 
the  man  stopping  short  at  the  reckoning  of  himself  when  he 
has  held  up  one  hand  and  counted  its  fingers  ;  for  here,  as 
in  the  two  South  American  tribes  before  mentioned,  piujgaiia, 
"  man,"  stamls  for  5.  Some  of  the  West  Australian  tribes 
have  done  much  better  than  this,  using  their  word  for 
"  hand,"  marh-ra ;  mavh-jln-hang-fia,  "  half  the  hands,"  is 
5  ;  marJi-jin-bang-ga-giKljir-gyn,  "  half  the  hands  and  one," 
is  6,  and  so  on;  marh-jin-helLi-h(>lli-gtidjir-jina-hang-ga,'*  the 
hand  on  either  side  and  half  the  feet,"  is  15.^  As  an  ex- 
ample from  the  Melanesian  languages  the  Mare  will  serve  ; 
it  reckons  10  as  ome  re  rue  tubenitief  apparently  **  the  two 


'  1      .!« 


.^1 


Mm 

i  4 


'"il 


Mayiiure). 
|i,  Coretu, 
Uobiiz- 
|(Muy8ca). 


'  Cranz,  '  Grijnland, '  p.  286  ;  Kleinsohraidt.  '  Gr.  der  GrbnL  Spr.  ;*  Rae 
in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc.'  vol.  iv  p.  145. 

'  -lillif^uii,  1.  c.  ;  0.  F.  Moore,  'Vocab.  W.  Australia.'  Compare  a  series 
of  tiuiimry  uumornls  to  9,  from  Sydney,  in  Pott,  'Ziihliaetliode,'  p.  46. 


i: 

I   L 


/      IC 


>ll 


{■  (V 


250 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


sides  **  (i.  e.  both  hands),  20  as  sa  re  nr/ome,  "  one  man,"  etc.  \ 
thus  in  John  v.  5  **  which  had  an  infirmity  thirty  and  eight 
years,"  tlie  numeral  38  is  expressed  by  the  phrase,  "  one 
man  and  both  sides  five  and  three."  ^  In  the  MaUiyo- 
Polynesian  hmguagcs,  the  typical  word  for  5  is  lima  or  rima 
"  hand,"  and  the  connexion  is  not  lost  by  the  phonetic 
variations  among  different  branches  of  this  family  of  lan- 
guages, as  in  Malagasy  dbni/,  Marquesan  Jima,  Tongan 
nima,  but  while  lima  and  its  varieties  mean  5  in  almost  all 
Malayo-Polynesian  dialects,  its  meaning  of  "hand"  is  con- 
fined to  a  much  narrower  district,  showing  that  the  word 
became  more  permanent  by  passing  into  the  condition  of  a 
traditional  numeral.  In  languages  of  the  Malaj'o-Polynesian 
family,  it  is  usually  found  that  6  etc.,  are  carried  on  with 
words  whose  etymology  is  no  longer  obvious,  but  the  forms 
lima-sa,  lima-ziui  "  hand-one,"  "  hand-two,"  have  been  found 
doing  dut}"  for  6  and  7.^  In  West  Africa,  Kolle's  account  of 
the  Vei  language  gives  a  case  in  point.  These  negroes  are 
so  dependent  on  their  fingers  that  some  can  hardly  count 
without,  and  their  toes  are  convenient  as  the  calculator  squats 
on  the  ground.  The  Vei  people  and  many  other  African 
tribes,  when  counting,  first  count  the  fingers  of  their  left 
hand,  beginning,  be  it  remembered,  from  the  little  one,  then 
in  the  same  manner  those  of  the  right  hand,  and  afterwards 
the  toes.  The  Vei  numeral  for  20,  ui  h/cnde,  means  obvi- 
ously "  a  person  (mo)  is  finished  (bande),"  and  so  on  with 
40,  60,  80,  etc.  "two  men,  three  men,  four  men,  etc.,  are 
finished."  It  is  an  interesting  point  that  the  negroes  who 
used  these  phrases  had  lost  their  original  descriptive  sense 
— the  words  have  become  mere  numerals  to  tliem.^  Lastly, 
for  bringing  before  our  minds  a  picture  of  the  man  counting 
upon  his  fingers,  and  being  struck  by  the  idea  that  if  he 
describes  his  gestures  in  words,  these  words  may  become  an 


I  i  ji 


'  Galieloutz,  'Melauesiclie  Spriichon,' p.  183. 

8  W.  V.  Humboldt,    '  Kawi  Spr,'  vol.  ii.  p.  308  ;  corroborated  by  '  As. 
Kes.'  vol.  vi.  p.  90  ;  '  Jourii.  Iiul.  Archip.'  vol.  iii.  p.  182,  etc. 
3  Koelle,  'Gr.  of  Vei.  Lang."  p.  27. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


2.31 


it 


I    \ 


ting 
If  he 
an 


•As. 


actual  name  for  the  number,  perhaps  no  language  in  the 
world  surpasses  the  Zulu.  The  Zulu  counting  on  his 
fingers  begins  in  general  with  the  little  finger  of  his  left 
hand.  When  he  comes  to  5,  this  he  may  call  edesanta 
"  finish  hand ;  "  then  he  goes  on  to  the  thumb  of  the  right 
hand,  and  so  the  word  tatisitupa  "taking  the  thumb" 
becomes  a  numeral  for  6.  Then  the  verb  komha  "  to  point," 
indicating  the  forefinger,  or  "  pointer,"  makes  the  next 
numeral,  7.  Thus,  answering  the  question  "  How  much 
did  your  master  give  you?  "  a  Zulu  would  say  **U  kombile  " 
"  He  pointed  with  his  forefinger,"  i.e.,  **  He  gave  me 
seven,"  and  this  curious  way  of  using  the  numeral  verb  is 
shown  in  such  an  example  as  "  amahasi  akomb'de  "  '*  the 
horses  have  pointed,"  i.e.,  "  there  were  seven  of  them."  In 
like  manner,  Kijangalohlli  "keep  back  two  fingers,"  i.e.  S, 
and  Kijangaloliinje  "  keep  back  one  finger,"  i.e.  9,  lead  on  to 
kumi,  10  ;  at  the  completion  of  each  ten  the  two  hands  with 
open  fingers  are  clapped  togeiher.^ 

The  theory  that  man's  primitive  mode  of  counting  was 
palpable  reckoning  on  his  hands,  and  the  proof  that  many 
numerals  in  present  use  are  actually  derived  from  such  a 
state  of  things,  is  a  great  step  towards  discovering  the  origin 
of  numerals  in  general.  Can  we  go  farther,  and  state 
broadly  the  mental  process  by  which  savage  men,  having  no 
numerals  as  yet  in  their  language,  came  to  invent  them  ? 
"What  was  the  origin  of  numerals  not  named  with  reference 
to  hands  and  feet,  and  especially  of  the  numerals  below  five, 
to  which  such  a  derivation  is  hardly  appropriate  ?  The 
subject  is  a  peculiarly  difficult  one.  Yet  as  to  principle  it 
is  not  altogether  obscure,  for  some  evidence  is  forth- 
coming as  to  the  actual  formation  of  new  numeral  words, 
these  being  made  by  simply  pressing  into  the  service 
names  of  objects  or  actions  in  some  way  appropriate  to  the 
purpose. 

People  possessing  full  sets  of  inherited  numerals  in  their 

'  Sclneuder,  'Gr.  for  Zulu  Spioget,' p.  30;  Dohne,  'Zulu  Die  ;'  Grout, 
•  Zulu  Gr.'    See  Hahn,  '  Gr.  des  Herero.' 


I     i 


■M 


11 


' 


i  m 


i. 


, 

i  l|' 

ii  •■ 

1 

J 

i 

k  I 


u 


252 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


11  ■'■: 


own  languages  have  nevertheless  sometimes  found  it  c  m* 
venient  to  invent  new  ones.  Thus  the  scholars  of  India, 
ages  ago,  selected  a  set  of  words  for  a  memoria  technica  in 
order  to  record  dates  and  numhers.  These  words  they  chose 
for  reasons  which  are  still  in  great  measure  evident ;  thus 
"  moon  "  or  "  earth  "  expressed  1,  there  being  but  one  of 
each;  2  might  be  called  "eye,"  "wing,"  "arm,"  "jaw," 
as  going  in  psiirs ;  for  3  they  said  "  Rama,"  "  fire,"  or 
"  qunlity,"  there  being  considered  to  be  three  Ramas,  three 
kinds  of  fire,  three  qualities  (guna) ;  for  4  were  used  "  veda" 
"  age,"  or  "  ocean,"  there  being  four  of  each  recognized ; 
"  season  "  for  6,  because  they  reckoned  six  seasons;  "sage" 
or  "  vowel "  for  7,  from  the  seven  sages  and  the  seven 
vowels ;  and  so  on  with  higher  numbers,  "  sun "  for  12, 
because  of  his  twelve  annual  denominations,  or  "  zodiac  " 
from  its  twelve  signs,  and  "  nail"  for  20,  a  word  incidentally 
bringing  in  a  finger-notation.  As  Sanskrit  is  very  rich  in 
synonyms,  and  as  even  the  numerals  themselves  might  be 
used,  it  became  very  easy  to  draw  up  phrases  or  nonsense- 
verses  to  record  series  of  numbers  by  tliis  sj'stem  of  arti- 
ficial memory.  The  following  is  a  Hindu  astronomical 
formula,  a  list  of  numbers  referring  to  the  stars  of  the  lunar 
constellations.  Each  word  stands  as  the  mnemonic  equiva- 
lent of  the  number  placed  over  it  in  the  English  translation. 
The  general  principle  on  which  the  words  are  chosen  to 
denote  the  numbers  is  evident  without  further  explana- 
tion : — 

'*  Vahni  tri  rtvishu  g\inendu  kritagnibhuta 
Bli!  S,sviuetra  9aia  bhuku  yugabilhi  iS,m3,h 
Ru(L {ibdhiiamaguuaveila9at£i  dviyugiua 
Dauta  budhairabhihitah  ki-aiua9o  bhatarah." 

8         3  6  5  3  1  4 

i.  «.,  "  Fire,  three,  season,  arrow,  quality,  moon,  four-side  of  die, 
3  5 

fire,  element, 
6  226  1144  3 

Arrow,  Asvin,  eye,  arrow,  earth,  earth,  age,  ocean,  Ramas, 


Ji!' 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


2o3 


'J  I 


l.^ 


^1 


11  4  3  3  4  100  2  2 

Eiulra,  ocean,  Rama,  quality,  Veda,  hundred,  two,  couple, 
32 

Ti'oth  :  hy  the  wise  have  been  set  forth  in  order  the  mighty 
lords."* 

It  occurred  to  Wilhelm  von  Humboldt,  in  studjnng  this 
curious  system  of  numeration,  that  he  had  before  his  eyes 
the  evidence  of  a  process  very  like  that  which  actually 
produced  the  regular  numeral  words  one,  two,  three,  and  so 
forth,  in  the  various  languages  of  the  world.  The  following 
passage  in  which,  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  he  set  fortli 
this  view,  seems  to  me  to  contain  a  nearly  perfect  key  to 
the  theory  of  numeral  words.  "  If  we  take  into  considera- 
tion the  origin  of  actual  numerals,  the  process  of  their 
formation  appears  evidently  to  have  been  the  same  as  tliat 
here  described.  The  latter  is  nothing  else  than  a  wider 
extension  of  the  former.  For  when  5  is  expressed,  as  in 
several  languages  of  the  Malay  family,  by  *  hand '  (lima), 
this  is  precisely  the  same  thing  as  when  in  the  description 
of  numbers  by  words,  2  is  denoted  by  'wing.'  Indisputably 
there  lie  at  the  root  of  all  numerals  such  metai)hors  as 
these,  though  they  cannot  always  be  now  traced.  But 
people  seem  early  to  have  felt  that  the  multiplicity  of  such 
signs  for  the  sair^e  number  w-as  superfluous,  too  clums}',  and 
leading  to  misunderstandings."  Therefore,  he  goes  on  to 
argue,  synonyms  of  numerals  are  ver}'  rare.  And  to 
nations  with  a  deep  sense  of  language,  the  feeling  must 
soon  have  been  present,  though  perhaps  without  rising  to 
distinct  consciousness,  that  recollections  of  the  original 
etymology  and  descriptive  meaning  of  numerals  had  best  be 
allowed  to  disappear,  so  as  to  leave  the  numerals  themselves 
to  become  mere  conventional  terms. 

»  Sir  W.  Jones  in  'As.  Res.'  vol.  ii.  1790,  p.  296  ;  E.  Jacquet  in  '  Nouv. 
Journ.  Asiat.'  18;55  ;  W.  v.  Huinlioldt,  '  Kawi-Spr.'  vol.  i.  p.  19.  This 
system  of  recording  dates,  etc.,  extended  as  far  as  Tibet  and  the  Indian 
Archipelago.  Many  ini[)ortant  points  of  Oriental  chronologj>  depend  on  .such 
formulas.  Unfortunately  their  evidence  is  more  or  less  vitiated  by  incon* 
sistenciea  in  the  use  of  vords  for  numbers. 


I      1  i-f  '";'<■[ 


■,t! 


.;htl 


1  Ui 
'<  ii! 


Mil 

til 


ill 


■J 

1 

-' 

• 

ii 

.>a»,><i'«'.L.ti*Ai**tv  ^:i:.z^^  ^ 


254 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTINO. 


:i^>    V 


'ii 


The  most  instructive  evidence  I  have  found  bearing  on 
the  formation  of  numerals,  other  than  digit-numerals, 
among  the  lower  races,  appears  in  the  use  on  both  sides  of 
the  globe  of  what  may  be  called  numeral-names  for  children. 
In  Australia  a  well-marked  case  occurs.  With  all  the 
poverty  of  the  aboriginal  languages  in  numerals,  3  being 
commonly  used  as  meaning  "  several  or  many,"  the  natives 
in  the  Adelaide  district  have  for  a  particular  purpose  gone 
fiir  beyond  this  narrow  limit,  and  possess  what  is  to  all 
intents  a  special  numeral  system,  extending  perhaps  to  9. 
They  give  fixed  names  to  their  children  in  order  of  age, 
which  are  set  down  as  follows  by  Mr.  Eyre  :  1.  Kertameru; 
2.  Warritya ;  3.  Kudnutya ;  4.  Monaitj'a;  5.  Milaitya;  6. 
Marrutya ;  7.  Wangutya ;  8.  Ngarlaitya  ;  9.  Pouarna. 
These  are  the  male  names,  from  which  the  female  differ  in 
termination.  They  are  given  at  birth,  more  distinctive 
appellations  being  soon  afterwards  chosen.^  A  similar 
habit  makes  its  appearance  among  the  Malays,  who  in  some 
districts  are  reported  to  use  a  series  of  seven  names  in  order 
of  age,  beginning  with  1.  Sulung  ("eldest");  2.  Awang 
("  friend,  companion "),  and  ending  with  Kechil  ("  little 
one"),  or  Boikjsu  ("youngest").  These  are  for  sons; 
daughters  have  Meh  prefixed,  and  nicknames  have  to  be 
used  for  practical  distinction.^  In  Madagascar,  the  Malay 
connexion  manifests  itself  in  the  appearance  of  a  similar  set 
of  appellations  given  to  children  in  lieu  of  proper  names, 
which  are,  however,  often  substituted  in  after  years. 
Males  ;  Lahimatoa  {"  first  male  "),  Lah-ivo  {"  intermediate 
male");  lla-fara-lahy  ("last  born  male").  Females; 
Ramatoa  ("  eldest  female  "),  Ra-ivo  ("  intermediate  "),  Ra- 
fara-vavy  ("  last  born  female  ").'     Lastly,  the  system  has 


'  Eyi'e,  'Australia,'  vol.  ii.  p.  324  :  SKiirmann,  'Vocab.  of  Parnkalla  Lang.' 
gives  forms  partially  corresponding. 

'^  'Journ    Ind.   xXrcliip.'  New  iSer.   vol.  ii.  1858,  p.  118    [Sulong,  Awang, 
Itam  {'Mack'),   Puteli  ('while'),  Allung,  Peiuleh,  Kechil  or  Fi(,ng-u]  ;  Bas- 
tian,  '  Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  ii.  p.  494.     The  details  are  imperfectly  given,  an 
seem  not  all  correct. 

^  Ellis,  'Madagascar,*  vol.  i.  p.  154.     Also  Andriarnpaivo,   or  Lahi-Zan- 


■'       ill 


THE    AKT    OF    COUNTING. 


255 


be 


an 


ian* 


come  into  existence  among  a  North  American  group  of 
tribes,  the  Dacotas  or  Sioux.  There  ha^e  been  found  in 
use  among  them  the  following  two  series  of  names  for 
sons  and  daughters  in  order  of  birth.  Eldest  son,  Chask^ ; 
second,  Haptann ;  third,  TIa-pe-dah ;  fourth,  Cliatun;  fifth, 
Tlarkit.  Eldest  daughter,  Wenonnh ;  second,  TIarpen ; 
third,  Ilarpatenah ;  foui'th,  Waaka  ;  fifth,  We-harka, 
These  mere  numeral  appellations  they  retain  through  child- 
hood, till  their  relations  or  friends  find  occasion  to  re- 
place them  by  bestowing  some  more  distinctive  personal 
name.* 

As  to  numerals  in  the  ordinary  sense,  Pol3'nesia  shows 
remarkable  cases  of  new  formation.  Besides  the  well- 
known  system  of  numeral  words  prevalent  in  Polynesia, 
exceptional  terms  have  from  time  to  time  grown  up.  Thus 
the  habit  of  altering  words  which  sounded  too  nearly  like  a 
king's  namo,  has  led  the  Tahitians  on  the  accession  of  new 
chiefs  to  make  several  new  words  for  numbers.  Thus, 
wanting  a  new  term  for  2  instead  of  the  ordinary  ruay  they 
for  obvious  reasons  took  up  the  word  piti,  **  together,"  and 
made  it  a  numeral,  while  to  get  a  new  word  for  5  instead  of 
rima,  "  hand,"  which  had  to  be  discontinued,  they  substi- 
tuted pae,  "  part,  division,"  meaning  probably  division  of 
the  two  hands.  Such  vvords  as  these,  introduced  in 
Polpiesia  for  ceremonial  reasons,  are  expected  to  be 
dropped  again  and  the  old  ones  replaced,  when  the  reason 
for  their  temporary  exclusion  ceases,  yet  the  new  2  and  5, 
piti  and  pae,  became  so  positively  the  proper  numerals  of 
the  language,  that  they  stand  instead  of  rua  and  rima  in  the 
Tahitian  translation  of  the  Gospel  of  St.  John  made  at  the 
time.  Again,  various  special  habits  of  counting  in  the 
South  Sea  Islands  have  had  their  efi'ect  on  language.  The 
Marquesans,  counting  fish  or  fruit  by  one  in  each  hand, 

drina,   for  last  male ;    Andrianivo  for  iutormediate  male.     Malagasy  lahT) 
*  male  '  =  Malay  laki ;  Malagasy  vary,  '  female '  =  Tongan  fafine,  Maori  wahine, 
'woman  ;'  comp.  Malay  bdtina,  'female.' 
'  M.   Eastman,  '  Dahcotah  ;  or,  Life  and  Legends  of  the  Sioux,'  p.  xxv. 


:    I  <  I 


I   ^  '      1 


/ 


I  /I.;,  ! 


256 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


:>,   ij 


have  come  to  ugc  a  system  of  counting  by  pairs  instead  «>f 
by  units.  They  start  with  tnuna,  "a  pair,"  wliich  tlms 
becomes  a  numeral  equivalent  to  2 ;  then  they  count 
onward  by  pairs,  so  that  when  they  talk  of  talcau  or  10,  they 
really  mean  10  pair  or  20.  For  bread-fruit,  as  they  are 
accustomed  to  tie  them  up  in  knots  of  four,  they  begin  with 
the  word  pona,  "  knot,"  which  thus  becomes  a  real  numeral 
for  4,  and  here  again  they  go  on  counting  by  knots,  so  that 
when  they  say  takair  or  10,  they  mean  10  knots  or  40. 
The  philological  mystification  thus  caused  in  Polynesinn 
vocabularies  is  extraordinary;  in  Tahitiiin,  etc.,  ran  and 
mano,  properly  meaning  100  and  1,000,  have  come  to 
signify  200  and  2,000,  wliile  in  Hawaii  a  second  doubling 
in  their  sense  makes  them  equivalent  to  400  and  4,000. 
Moreover,  it  seems  possible  to  trace  the  transfer  of  suitable 
names  of  objects  still  farther  in  Polynesia  in  the  Tongau 
and  Maori  word  tckau,  10,  which  seems  to  have  been  a  word 
for  "parcel"  or  "bunch,"  used  in  counting  yams  and 
fish,  as  also  in  tefuhi,  100,  derived  from  fulii,  "  sheaf  or 
bundle."^ 

In  Africa,  also,  special  numeral  formations  are  to  be 
noticed.  In  the  Yoruba  language,  40  is  called  ogodzi,  **a 
string,"  because  cowries  are  strung  by  forties,  and  200  is 
igha,  "  a  heap,"  meaning  again  a  heap  of  cowries.  Among 
the  Dahomans  in  like  manner,  40  cowries  make  a  kade  or 
"  string,"  50  strings  make  one  afo  or  "  head  ;  "  these  words 
becoming  numerals  for  40  and  2,000.  When  the  king  of 
Dahome  attacked  Abeokuta,  it  is  on  record  that  he  was 
repulsed  with  the  heavy  loss  of  "  two  heads,  twenty  strings, 
and  twenty  cowries  "  of  men,  that  is  to  say,  4,820.^ 

Among  cultured  nations,  whose  languages  are  most 
tightly    bound    to    the     conventional     and     unintelligible 

>  H.  Hale,  '  Etlmography  and  rhilology,'  vol.  vi.  of  Wilkes,  U.  S.  Explor- 
ing Exp  ,  Philadelphia,  1846,  pp.  172,  289.  (N.B.  The  ordinary  editions  do 
not  contain  this  important  volume. ) 

2  Bowen,  '  Gr.  and  Die.  of  Yoruba.'  Burton  in  '  Mem.  Anthrop.  See' 
vol.  i.  p.  314. 


Mi': 
•'■  '-'  % 


THE    ABT    OF    COUNTINO. 


257 


or 

be 
"a 

is 


lost 
rible 

cplor- 
|ns  do 

Soc' 


numerals  of  their  ancestors,  it  is  likewise  usual  to  find 
other  terms  existing  which  are  practically  numerals  already, 
and  might  drop  at  once  into  the  recognized  place  of  such,  if 
by  any  chance  a  gap  were  made  for  them  in  the  trnditionnl 
series.  Had  we  room,  for  instance,  for  a  new  word  instead 
of  two,  then  either  pair  (Latin  par,  "  equal ")  or  covpk 
(Latin  copula,  "  bond  or  tie,")  is  ready  to  fill  its  place. 
Instead  of  twenty,  the  good  English  word  score,  "  notch," 
will  serve  our  turn,  while,  for  the  same  purpose,  German 
can  use  stlcge,  possibly  with  the  original  sense  of  **  a  stall 
full  of  cattle,  a  sty;"  Old  Norse  drott,  "a  company," 
Danish,  snees.  A  list  of  such  words  used,  but  not  gram- 
matically classed  as  numerals  in  ,•  •ropean  languages,  shows 
great  variety :  examples  are,  Old  Norse,  Jiockr  (flock),  5 ; 
sveit,  6;  diott  (party),  20;  tldodli  (people),  30;  folk 
(people),  40;  old  (people),  80;  her  (army),  100;  Sleswig, 
schill:,  12  (as  though  we  were  to  make  a  numeral  out  of 
"  shilling ")  ;  Mid  High-German,  rotte,  4 ;  New  High- 
German,  mandel,  15 ;  schock  (sheaf),  60.  The  Letts  give  a 
curious  parallel  to  Polynesian  cases  just  cited.  They 
throw  crabs  and  little  fish  three  at  a  time  in  counting  them, 
and  therefore  the  word  mettens,  *'  a  throw,"  has  come  to 
mean  3  ;  while  flounders  being  fastened  in  lots  of  thirty, 
the  word  kahlls,  "  a  cord,"  becomes  a  term  to  express  this 
number.^ 

In  two  other  ways,  the  production  of  numerals  from 
merely  descriptive  words  may  be  observed  both  among 
lower  and  higher  races.  The  Gallas  have  no  numerical 
fractional  terms,  but  they  make  an  equivalent  set  of  terms 
from  the  division  of  the  cakes  of  salt  which  they  use  as 
money.  Thus  ichahnana,  "  a  broken  piece  "  (from  tchaha, 
"  to  break,"  as  we  say  "  a  fraction  "),  receives  the  meaning 
of  one-half;  a  term  which  we  may  compare  with  Latin 
dimidium,  French  denii.  Ordinal  numbers  are  generally 
derived  from  cardinal  numbers,  as  third ,  fourth,  fifth,  from 

>  See  Pott,  'Zalilinetliode,'  pp.  78,  99,  124,  161;  Grimm,  'Deutsche 
Rechtsalteithiinier,'  ch.  v. 

VOL.   I.  8 


>  II 


I     f'l 


I  " 


i,      I 


•"'■ 


'■Me' 

"I 


U  :* 


in 


if: 


258 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


three,  four,  Jive.  But  among  the  very  low  ones  there  is  to 
be  seen  evidence  of  independent  formation  quite  uncon- 
nected with  a  conventional  system  of  numerals  already 
existing.  Thus  the  Greenlander  did  not  use  his  **  one"  to 
make  "first,"  but  calls  it  sujiujdlck,  "  foremost,"  nor  "two" 
to  make  "  second,"  which  he  calls  aipd,  "  his  companion  ; " 
it  is  only  at  "third"  that  he  takes  to  his  cardinals,  and 
forms  pingajiiat  in  connexion  with  pingasut,  3.  So,  in 
Indo-European  languages,  the  ordinal  prathamas,  irpwros, 
j)rimus,  first,  h?i?,  nothing  to  do  with  a  numerical  "one," 
but  with  the  preposition  pra,  "  before,"  as  meaning  simply 
"  foremost ;  "  and  although  Greeks  and  Germans  call  the 
next  ordinal  Sewrepos,  ziveite,  from  hvo,  zivei,  we  call  it 
second,  Latin  secundus,  "the  following"  (sequi),  which  is 
again  a  descriptive  sense-word. 

If  we  allow  ourselves  to  mix  for  a  moment  what  is  with 
what  might  be,  we  can  see  how  unlimited  is  the  field  of 
possible  growth  of  numerals  by  mere  adoption  of  the  names 
of  familiar  things.  Following  the  example  of  the  Sleswigers 
we  might  make  shilling  a  numeral  for  12,  and  go  on  to  ex- 
press 4  by  groat ;  week  would  provide  us  with  a  name  for  7, 
and  clover  for  3.  But  this  simple  method  of  description  is 
not  the  only  available  one  for  the  purpose  of  making 
numerals.  The  moment  any  series  of  names  is  arranged  in 
regular  order  in  our  minds,  it  becomes  a  counting-machine. 
I  have  read  of  a  little  girl  who  was  set  to  count  cards,  and 
she  counted  them  accordingly,  Jpnuary,  February,  March, 
April.  She  might,  of  course,  have  reckoned  them  as 
^Monday,  Tuesday,  Wednesday.  It  is  interesting  to  find  a 
case  coming  under  the  same  class  in  the  language  of  grown 
poo])le.  We  know  that  the  numerical  value  of  the  Hebrew 
letters  is  given  with  reference  to  their  place  in  the  alphabet, 
which  was  arranged  for  reasons  that  can  hardly  have  had 
anything  to  do  with  arithmetic.  The  Greek  alphabet  is  modi- 
fied from  a  Semitic  one,  but  instead  of  letting  the  numeral 
value  ol  their  letters  follow  throughout  their  newly-arranged 
alpliabet,  they  reckon  a,  /3,  y,  8,  e,  properly  as  1,  2,  3,  4,  6, 


THE    AET    OF    COUNTING. 


259 


r 


then  put  in  r  for  6,  and  so  manage  to  let  i  stand  for  10, 
as  "^  does  in  Hebrew,  where  it  is  really  the  10th  letter.  Now, 
having  this  conventional  arrangement  of  letters  made,  it  is 
evident  that  a  Greek  who  had  to  give  up  the  regular  1,  2,  3, 
— eUj  bvo,  T/aeis,  could  supply  their  places  at  once  by 
adopting  the  names  of  the  letters  which  had  been  settled  to 
stand  for  them,  thus  calling  1  aJpJia,  2  beta,  3  gamma,  and 
so  forth.  The  thing  has  actually  happened  ;  a  remarkable 
slang  dialect  of  Albania,  which  is  Greek  in  structure, 
though  full  of  borrowed  and  mystified  words  and  metaphors 
and  epithets  understood  only  by  the  initiated,  has,  as  its 
equivalent  for  **  four "  and  "  ten,"  the  words  de'Ara   and 


icora.^ 


While  insisting  on  the  value  of  such  evidence  as  this  in 
making  out  the  general  principles  of  the  formation  of 
numerals,  I  have  not  found  it  profitable  to  undertake  the 
task  of  etymoh)gizing  the  actual  numerals  of  the  langunges 
of  the  worldj  outside  the  safe  limits  of  the  systems  of  digit- 
numerals  among  the  lower  races,  already  discussed.  There 
may  be  in  the  languages  of  the  lower  races  other  relics  of 
the  etymology'  of  numerals,  giving  the  clue  to  the  ideas 
according  to  which  they  were  selected  for  an  arithmetical 
purpose,  but  such  relics  seem  scanty  and  indistinct.^  There 
may  even  exist  vestiges  of  a  growth  of  numerals  from  de- 
scriptive words  in  our  Indo-European  languages,  in  Hebrew 
and   Arabic,   in   Chinese.      Such   etymologies   have    been 


'  ''I 


I  <l 


*  Francisque-Michel,  'Argot,'  p.  483. 

^  Of  oviilence  of  this  class,  the  following  deserves  attention  : — Dobrizhoffer, 
*  Abipones,' vol.  'i.  p.  1(39,  {rives  geijenknati,  'ostrich-toes,'  as  tho  nuincral 
for  4,  their  ostrich  having  tliree  toes  betore  and  one  beiiind,  and  ne&nhakk, 
'a  hve-coloured  spotted  hide,'  as  the  nuiuoral  5.  D'Orbiguy,  '1/lloimua 
Americairi,' vol.  ii.  p.  163,  remarks: — "Los  Chiiiiiitos  no  savent  comiitor  (jue 
jiisciu'b,  un  {Uima),  n'ayant  plus  ensuito  que  des  torniua  do  coniparais«JU." 
KoUo,  'Gr.  of  Vei  Lung.,'  notices  that  fira  means  both  'with'  and  2,  and 
thinks  the  former  meaning  original,  (conij)are  the  Tah.  piti,  'together,'  thenco 
2).  Quichua  chiincu,  'heap,'  chanca,  10,  may  bo  connei'ted.  Aztec,  cc,  1, 
cen-t.H,  'grain,'  may  be  connected.  On  possible  derivations  of  2  from 
Hand,  &c.,  especially  Hottentot  t'koam,  'hand,  2,' see  Pott,  '  Zdhlmethode, 
p.  29. 

u  2 


,1  » 


ir  ! 


%■ 


\      K 


|i  ('  ;  ii 


•iJ  ,  !':;!. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


Iriui 


brought  forward,^  and  they  are  consistent  with  what  is 
known  of  the  principles  on  which  numerals  or  quasi- 
numerals  are  really  formed.  But  so  far  as  I  have  been  able 
to  examine  the  evidence,  the  cases  all  seem  so  philologically 
doubtful,  that  I  cannot  bring  them  forward  in  aid  of  the 
theory  before  us,  and,  indeed,  think  that  if  they  succeed  in 
establishing  themselves,  it  will  be  by  the  theory  supporting 
them,  rather  than  by  then*  supporting  the  theory.  This 
state  of  things,  indeed,  fits  perfectly  with  the  view  here 
adopted,  that  when  a  word  has  once  been  taken  up  to 
serve  as  a  numeral,  and  is  thenceforth  wanted  as  a  mere 
symbol,  it  becomes  the  interest  of  language  to  allow  it  to 
break  down  into  an  apparent  nonsense-word,  from  which  all 
traces  of  original  etymology  have  disappeared. 

Etymological  research  into  the  derivation  of  numeral 
words  thus  hardly  goes  with  safety  beyond  showing  in  the 
languages  of  the  lower  culture  frequent  instances  of  digit 
numerals,  words  taken  from  direct  description  of  the  ges- 
tures of  counting  on  fingers  and  toes.  Beyond  this, 
another  strong  argument  is  available,  which  indeed  covers 
almost  the  whole  range  of  the  problem.  The  numerical 
systems  of  the  world,  by  the  actual  schemes  of  their  arrange- 
ment, extend  and  confirm  the  opinion  that  counting  on 
fingers  and  toes  was  man's  original  method  of  reckoning, 
taken  up  and  represented  in  language.  To  count  the 
fingers  on  one  hand  up  to  5,  and  then  go  on  with  a  second 


'  See  Farrar,  'Chapters  on  Language,' p.  223.  Bonloew,  '  Recheiches  siir 
rOrigine  des  Noma  de  Noml)re  ;'  Pictet,  'Origines  Indo-Europ.'  part  ii.  ch. 
ii.  ;  Pott,  'Ziililmetliode,'  p.  128,  eto. ;  A.  v  Humboldt's  pi  lUsible  compari- 
son between  Skr.  pancJia,  5,  and  Vris.  penjch,  'the  palm  of  the  hand  with  the 
fingers  spread  out ;  the  outspread  foot  of  a  bird,'  as  though  6  were  called 
2>nnch(i  from  being  like  a  hand,  is  erroneous.  The  Persian  penjeh  is  itself 
del  ived  from  the  numerals,  as  in  >kr.  the  liand  is  called //a»ic/ta(.'<U-/ia,  'the 
five-bninched.'  The  same  f  irmation  is  found  in  English  ;  slang  describes  a 
man's  hand  as  his  'fives,'  or  'bunch  of  fives,'  thence  the  name  of  the  game 
of  fives,  played  by  striking  the  ball  with  the  open  hand,  u  term  which  has  made 
its  way  out  of  slang  into  accepted  language.  Burton  describes  the  polite 
Arab  at  a  meal,  calling  his  companion's  attention  to  a  grain  of  rice  fallen  into 
liis  beard.  "The  gazelle  is  in  the  garden,"  he  oays,  with  a  smile.  "  W« 
will  hunt  lier  with  thu Jive,"  is  the  reply. 


THE    ART    OF    COTNTING. 


2G1 


es  8ur 
111.  ch. 

luiuiii- 
Itli  tlio 

calle.l 
itself 

.  'the 

•ibus  a 
gaiae 
made 
pulite 

til  into 


five,  is  a  notation  by  fives,  or  as  it  is  called,  a  quinary  nota- 
tion. To  count  by  the  use  of  bc;th  hands  to  10,  and  thence 
to  reckon  by  tens,  is  a  decimal  notation.  To  go  on  by 
hands  and  feet  to  20,  and  thence  to  reckon  by  twenties,  is  a 
vigesimal  notation.  Now  though  in  the  larger  proportion  of 
known  languages,  no  distinct  mention  of  fingers  and  toes, 
hands  and  feet,  is  observable  in  the  numerals  themselves, 
yet  the  very  schemes  of  quinary,  decimal,  and  vigesimal  no- 
tation remain  to  vouch  for  such  hand-and-foot-countintj 
having  been  the  original  method  on  which  they  were 
founded.  There  seems  no  doubt  that  the  number  of  tlie 
fingers  led  to  the  adoption  of  the  not  especially  suitable 
number  10  as  a  period  in  reckoning,  so  that  decimal 
arithmetic  is  based  on  human  anatomy.  This  is  so  obvious, 
that  it  is  curious  to  see  Ovid  in  his  well-known  Hnes  putting 
the  two  facts  close  together,  without  seeing  that  the  second 
was  the  consequence  of  the  first. 

"  Annus  orat,  decimum  cum  luna  receperat  orbem. 

Hio  numerus  magno  tunc  in  honoro  fuit. 
Seu  quia  tot  digiti,  yter  quo3  numorare  solemus : 

Seu  quia  bis  quino  femina  mense  parit : 
Seu  quod  adusque  decern  numero  croscente  venitur, 

Piincipium  spatiis  sumitur  inde  novis."' 

In  surveying  tbe  languages  of  the  world  at  large,  it  is 
found  that  among  tribes  or  nations  far  enough  advanced  in 
arithmetic  to  count  up  to  five  in  words,  there  prevails,  with 
scarcely  an  exception,  a  method  founded  on  hand-counting, 
quinary,  decimal,  vigesimal,  or  combined  of  these.  For 
perfect  examples  of  the  quinary  method,  we  may  take  a 
Polynesian  series  which  runs  1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  5*1,  5'2,  &c. ;  or 
a  Melanesian  series  which  may  be  rendered  as  1,  2,  3,  4,  5, 
2nd  1,  2nd  2,  &c.  Quinary  leading  into  decimal  is  well 
sliown  in  the  Fellata  series  1  ...  5,  5*1  ...  10,  lO'l  .  .  . 
10-5,  10-6-1  .  .  .  20,  .  .  .  30,  »  .  .  40,  &c.  Pure  decimal 
may  be  instanced  noni  Hebrew  1,  2  .  .  .  10,  10' 1  .  .  .  20, 
.20'1  .  •  •  &>c.     Pure  vigesimal  is  not  usual,  for  the  obvious 

»  Ovid.  Fast.  iii.  121. 


^ 


M 


I     n 


Uli'i 


I  } 


262 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


renson  that  a  set  of  independent  numerals  to  20  would  be 
inconvenient,  but  it  takes  on  from  quinary,  as  in  Aztec, 
which  may  be  analyzed  as  1,  2  ...  6,  5*1  .  .  .  10,  10*  1  .  .  . 
10-5,  IO-5'I  ...  20,  20-1  .  .  .  20-10,  20-10-1  .  .  .  40,  .Ic; 
or  from  decimal,  as  in  Basque,  1  .  .  .  10,  10"1  .  .  .  20,  20'1 
.  .  .  20*10,  •  20"10'1  .  .  .  40,  etc.^  It  seems  unnecessary  to 
bring  forward  here  the  mass  of  linguistic  details  required  for 
any  general  demonstration  of  these  principles  of  numeration 
among  the  races  of  the  world.  Prof.  Pott,  of  Halle,  has  ti'eated 
the  subject  on  elaborate  philological  evidence,  in  a  special 
monograph,^  which  is  incidentally  the  most  extensive  collec- 
tion of  details  relating  to  numerals,  indispensable  to  students 
occupied  with  such  inquiries.  For  the  present  purpose  the 
following  rough  generalization  may  suffice,  that  the  quinary 
system  is  frequent  among  the  lower  races,  among  whom  also 
the  vigesimal  system  is  considerably  developed,  but  the  ten- 
dency of  the  higher  nations  has  been  to  avoid  the  one  as 
too  scanty,  and  the  other  as  too  cumbrous,  and  to  use  the  in- 
termediate decimal  system.  These  differences  in  the  usage  of 
various  tribes  and  nations  do  not  interfere  with,  but  rather 
confirm,  the  general  principle  which  is  their  common  cause, 
that  man  originally  learnt  to  reckon  from  his  fingers  and  toes, 
and  in  various  ways  stereotyped  in  language  the  result  of  this 
primitive  method. 

Some  curious  points  as  to  the  relation  of  these  systems 
may  be  noticed  in  Europe.  It  was  observed  of  a  certain 
deaf-and-dumb  boy,  Oliver  Caswell,  that  he  learnt  to  count 
as  high  as  50  on  his  fingers,  but  always  "fived,"  reckoning, 
for  instance,  18  objects  as  "  both  hands,  one  hand,  three 
fingers."^   The  suggestion  has  been  made  that  the  Greek  use 

'  The  aotiinl  word-nuniertils  of  the  two  quinary  serios  are  given  as  examples. 
Tritiiu's  liay,  1,  saviosi  ;  2,  roeeti ;  3,  toiiwroc  ;  4,/aat;  5,  rimi ;  6,  rirri' 
samos ;  7,  rim-roecti ;  8,  rim-touwroe ;  9,  rim-faat ;  10,  woetsja.  Lifu,  1. 
pacha  ;  2,  lo  ;  3,  kun  ;  4,  thack  ;  5,  thabumb  ;  6,  lo-acha  ;  7,  lo-a-lo  ;  8,  lO' 
kunn  ;  9,  lo-thack ;  10,  f.e-hennete. 

^  A.  F.  Pott,  '  Die  Quiiiiiie  iind  Vigcsimale  Zahlmethodo  bei  Volkem  aller 
Wfilttlieile.'  Halle,  1847  ;  KUii]ilenionte(l  in  '  Fostgabe  zur  xxv.  Versauimluug 
Ueutscher  riiiloldi^un,  etc.,  in  Hallo'  (18()7). 

'  *  Account  of  Laura  BriJgmaji,'  JiOndou,  1845,  p.  159. 


J  ■■. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING 


263 


Iree 
luse 

jles. 
'•iirv- 

I  1 

llo- 

Luer 
lung 


ofirefXTrdCeiv,  **to  five,"  as  an  expression  for  counting,  is  a  trace 
of  rude  old  quinary  numeration  (compare  Finnish  lokket  "to 
count,"  from  lokke  "ten  " ).  Certainly,  the  Roman  numerals 
I,  II,  ...  V,  VI  ...  X,  XI  ..  .  XV,  XVI,  etc.,  form  a 
remarkably  well-defined  written  quinary  system.  Bemains 
of  vigesimal  counting  are  still  more  instructive.  Counting 
by  twenties  is  a  strongly  marked  Keltic  characteristic.  The 
cumbrous  vigesimal  notation  could  hardly  be  brought  more 
strongly  into  view  in  any  savage  race  than  in  such  examples 
as  Gaelic  aon  deug  is  da  fJilchead  "one,  ten,  and  two 
twenties,"  i.e.,  51;  or  Welsh  unarhynitheg  ar  ngnin  "one 
and  fifteen  over  twenty,"  i.e.,  36 ;  or  Breton  unnck  ha  tri- 
ugent  "  eleven  and  three  twenties,"  i.e.,  71.  Now  French, 
being  a  Romance  language,  has  a  regular  system  of  Latin 
tens  up  to  100 ;  cinquante,  soixante,  sepfnnte,  hnifanfc, 
nonante,  which  ai'e  to  be  found  still  in  use  in  districts  with- 
in the  limits  of  the  French  language,  as  in  Belgium. 
Nevertheless,  the  clumsy  system  of  reckoning  by  twenties 
has  broken  out  through  the  decimal  system  in  France. 
The  septante  is  to  a  great  extent  sujipressed,  soixante- 
quatorze,  for  instance,  standing  for  74  ;  qitatre-iihirjts  has 
fairly  established  itself  for  80,  and  its  use  continues  into 
the  nineties^  qiuitre-viinjt-treix'e  for  93 ;  in  numbers  above 
100  we  find  slx-vingts,  sepf-vingts,  hiiit-vivgts,  for  120,  140, 
T'.  ■'?,  and  a  certain  hospital  has  its  name  of  Les  Quinze- 
vingts  frum  its  300  inmates.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  most 
reasonable  explanation  of  this  curious  phenomenon,  to 
suppose  the  earlier  Keltic  system  of  France  to  have  held  its 
ground,  modelling  the  later  French  into  its  own  ruder 
shape.  In  England,  tha  Anglo-Saxon  numeration  io 
decimal,  Imnd-aeofontig ,  70 ;  hund-ealitatig,  80 ;  Jiund-ni- 
gontig,90',  hund-teontig,  100;  himd'enhtfontig,  110;  hund- 
tweJftig,  120.  It  may  be  here  also  by  Keltic  survival  that 
the  vigesimal  reckoning  by  the  "  score,"  threescore  and  ten, 
fourscore  and  thirteen,  ^tc,  gained  a  position  in  English 
which  it  has  not  yet  totally  lost.^ 

*  Compare  the  Rajmahali  tribes  adopting  Hindi  iiumero,ls,  yet  reckoning  by 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


From  some  minor  details  in  numeration,  ethnological 
hints  maj'  be  gained.  Among  rude  tribes  with  scanty 
series  of  numerals,  combination  to  make  out  new  numbers 
is  very  soon  resorted  to.  Among  Australian  tribes  addition 
makes  "two-one,"  "  two-two,"  express  3  and  4;  in  Guachi 
**  two-two  "  is  4  ;  in  San  Antonio  "  four  and  two-one  "  is  7. 
The  plan  of  making  numerals  by  subtraction  is  known  in 
North  America,  and  is  well  shown  in  the  Amo  language  of 
Yesso,  where  the  words  for  8  and  9  obviously  mean  "two 
liom  ten,"  "  one  from  ten.''  Multiplication  pppears,  as  in 
San  Antonio,  "  two-and-one-two,"  and  in  a  Tupi  dialect 
"  two-three,"  to  express  6.  Division  seems  not  known  f(U' 
;mch  purposes  among  the  lower  races,  and  quite  exceptional 
-moTig  the  higher.  Facts  of  this  class  show  variety  in  the 
iiiventive  devices  of  mankinu^  and  independence  in  their 
formation  of  language.  Tl-dv  are  consistent  at  the  same 
time  with  the  general  principles  of  hand-counting.  The 
traces  of  what  might  be  called  binary,  ternary,  quaternary, 
senary  reckoning,  which  turn  on  2,  3,  4,  6,  are  mere 
varieties,  leading  up  to,  or  lapsing  into,  quinary  and  decimal 
methods. 

The  contrast  is  a  striking  one  between  the  educated 
European,  vath  his  easy  use  of  his  boundless  numeral  series, 
and  the  'Lasmanian,  who  reckons  3,  or  anything  beyond  2, 
as  "  miuiy,"  and  makes  shift  by  his  whole  hand  to  reach  the 
limit  of  "  man,"  that  is  to  say,  5.  This  contrast  is  due  to 
av)  est  of  development  in  the  savage,  whose  mind  remains  in 
the  childish  state  VvMiich  orie  of  onr  nursery  number-rhymes 
illustrates  in  a  curiously  perfect  Wi,y.     It  runs — 

"  Gnu's  iiono, 
Two's  some, 
ThiDo's  a  many, 
Four's  a  penny, 
Five's  a  httle  hundrod." 

twenties.  Shaw,  1.  c  The  usa  of  a  '  score '  as  an  indefinite  numher  in 
Eiigliiud,  and  similarly  of  20  in  Trnncc,  of  40  in  the  Hebrew  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  Arabic  of  the  Tliousand  and  One  Nights,  may  be  among 
other  traces  of  vigesiiual  reckoning. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


2G.5 


Imlicv  in 
Ithe  Old 
among 


To  notice  this  state  of  things  among  savages  and  chiMrou 
raises  interesting  points  as  to  the  early  history  of  grammar. 
\V.  von  Humboldt  suggested  the  analogy  between  the 
savage  notion  of  3  as  "  many"  and  the  grammatical  use  of  3 
to  form  a  kind  of  superlative,  in  forms  of  which  "  tris- 
incgistus,"  "ter  felix,"  "thrice  blest,"  are  familiar  instances. 
The  relation  of  single,  dual,  and  plural  is  well  shown  pic- 
toriall}'  in  the  Egyptian  hieroglyphics,  where  the  picture  of 
an  object,  a  horse  for  instance,  is  marked  by  a  single  line  | 
if  but  one  is  meant,  by  two  lines  |  |  if  two  are  meant,  b}' 
three  lines  |  |  |  if  three  or  an  indefinite  plural  number  are 
meant.  The  sclieme  of  grammatical  number  in  some  of  the 
most  ancient  and  important  languages  of  the  world  is  laid 
down  on  the  same  savage  principle.  Egyptian,  Arabic, 
Hebrew,  Sanskrit,  Greek,  Gothic,  are  examples  of  languages 
using  singular,  dual,  and  plural  number ;  but  the  tendency 
of  higher  intellectual  culture  has  been  to  discard  the  plan  as 
inconvenient  and  unprofitable,  and  only  to  distinguish  sin- 
gidar  and  plural.  No  doubt  the  dual  held  its  place  by  in- 
heritance from  an  early  period  of  culture,  and  Dr.  D.  Wilson 
seems  justified  in  his  opinion  that  it  "  preserves  to  us  the 
memorial  of  that  stage  of  thought  when  all  beyond  two  was 
an  idea  of  indefinite  number."  ^ 

When  two  races  at  ditFerent  levels  of  culture  come  into 
contact,  the  ruder  people  adopt  new  art  and  knowledge,  but 
at  the  same  time  their  own  special  culture  usually  comes  to 
a  standstill,  and  even  falls  off.  It  is  thus  with  the  art  of 
counting.  We  may  be  able  to  prove  that  the  lower  race 
had  actually  been  making  great  and  independent  progress 
in  it,  but  when  the  higher  race  comes  with  a  convenient 
and  unlimited  means  of  not  only  naming  all  imaginable 
numbers,  but  of  writing  ihem  down  and  reckoning  with 
them  by  means  of  a  few  simple  figures,  what  likelihood  is 
there  that  the  barbarian's  clumsy  methods  should  be  farther 
worked  out  ?     As  to  the  ways  in  which  the  numerals  of  the 

»  D.  Wilsou,  '  rrehistoric  Man,'  p.  616. 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


superior  race  are  grafted  on  the  language  of  the  inferior, 
Captain  Grant  describes  the  native  slaves  of  Equatorial 
Africa  occupying  their  lounging  hours  in  learning  the 
numerals  of  their  Arab  masters.^  Father  Dobrizhoffer's 
account  of  the  arithmetical  relations  between  the  native 
Brazilians  and  the  Jesuits  is  a  good  description  of  the 
intellectual  contact  between  savages  and  missionaries. 
The  Guaranis,  it  appears,  counted  up  to  4  with  their  native 
numerals,  and  when  they  got  beyond,  the}''  would  say 
**  innumerable."  **  But  as  counting  is  both  of  manifold  use 
in  common  life,  and  in  the  confessional  absolutely  indis- 
pensable in  making  a  complete  confession,  the  Indians  were 
daily  taught  at  the  public  catechising  in  the  church  to 
count  in  Spanish.  On  Sundays  the  whole  people  used  to 
count  with  a  loud  voice  in  Spanish,  from  1  to  1,000."  The 
missionary,  it  is  true,  did  not  find  the  natives  use  the 
numbers  thus  learnt  very  accuriitely — "  We  were  washing 
at  a  blackamoor,"  he  says.^  If,  however,  we  examine  the 
modern  vocabularies  of  savage  or  low  barbarian  tribes,  they 
will  be  found  to  afford  interesting  evidence  how  really 
effective  the  influence  of  higher  on  lower  civilization  has 
been  in  this  matter.  So  far  as  the  ruder  system  is  com- 
plete and  moderately  convenient,  it  may  stand,  but  where 
it  ceases  or  grows  cumbrous,  and  sometimes  at  a  lower 
limit  than  this,  we  can  see  the  cleverer  foreigner  taking  it 
into  his  own  hands,  supplementing  or  supplanting  the 
scanty  numerals  of  the  lower  race  by  his  own.  The  higher 
race,  though  advanced  enough  to  act  thus  on  the  lower, 
need  not  be  itself  at  an  extremely  high  level.  Markham 
observes  that  the  Jivaras  of  the  Maranon,  with  native 
numerals  up  to  5,  adopt  for  higher  numbers  those  of  the 
Quichua,  the  language  of  the  Peruvian  Incas.^  The  cases 
of  the  indigenes  of  India  are  instructive.  The  Khonds 
reckon  1  and  2  in  native  words,  and  then  take  to  borrowed 

>  Grant  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  90. 

•  Dobrizhoffer,  *  Gescli.  der  Abiponer,'  p.  205;  Eng.  Trans.  voL  ii.  p.  171. 

»  Markliiim  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  166. 


1      <l 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


2Cu 


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171. 


Hindi  numerals.  The  Oraon  tribes,  while  belonging  to  a 
race  of  the  Dravidian  stock,  and  having  had  a  series  of 
native  numerals  accordingl}',  appear  to  have  given  up  their 
use  beyond  4,  or  sometimes  even  2,  and  adopted  Hindi 
numerals  in  their  place.^  The  South  American  Conibos 
were  observed  to  count  1  and  2  with  their  own  words,  and 
then  to  borrow  Spanish  numerals,  much  as  a  Brazilian 
dialect  of  the  Tupi  family  is  noticed  in  the  last  century  as 
having  lost  the  native  5,  and  settled  down  into  using  the 
old  native  numerals  up  to  3,  and  then  continuing  in  Portu- 
guese.'' In  Melanesia,  the  Annatom  language  can  only 
count  in  its  own  numerals  to  5,  and  then  borrows  English 
siks,  seven,  eet,  nain,  etc.  In  some  Polynesian  islands, 
though  the  native  numerals  are  extensive  enough,  the 
confusion  arising  from  reckoning  by  pairs  and  fours  as  well 
as  units,  has  induced  the  natives  to  escape  from  perplexity 
by  adopting  huneri  and  tausani.^  And  though  the  Esqui- 
maux counting  by  hands^  feet,  and  whole  men,  is  capable  of 
expressing  high  numbers,  it  becomes  practically  clumsy 
even  when  it  gets  among  the  scores,  and  the  Greenlander 
has  done  well  to  adopt  untrite  and  tualnte  from  his  Danish 
teachers.  Similarity  of  numerals  in  two  languages  is  a 
point  to  which  philologists  attach  great  and  deserved 
importance  in  the  question  whether  they  are  to  be  con- 
sidered as  sprung  from  a  common  stock.  But  it  is  clear 
that  so  far  as  one  race  may  have  borrowed  numerals  from 
another,  this  evidence  breaks  down.  The  fact  that  this 
borrowing  extends  as  low  as  3,  and  may  even  go  still  luvver 
for  all  we  know,  is  a  reason  for  using  the  argument  from 
connected  numerals  cautiously,  as  tending  rather  to  prove 
intercourse  than  kinship. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  of  civilization,  the  adoption 


»  Latham.  'Comp.  Pliil.'  p.  186;  Shaw  in  'As.  Res.*  vol.  iv.  p.  96; 
Journ.  As.  Soc.  Bengal,'  1866,  part  ii.  pp.  27,  204,  251. 

3  St.  Cricc]  in  '  Bulletin  de  la  Soc.  de  Geog.'  1853,  p.  286  ;  Pott.  Zahlme- 
thode,'  p.  7. 

•  Gnbelentz,    .  89     Hale,  1.  0. 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


of  numerals  from  nation  to  nation  still  presents  interesting 
philological  points.  Our  own  language  gives  curious 
instances,  as  second  and  vtillion.  The  manner  in  which 
English,  in  common  with  German,  Dutch,  Danish,  and 
even  Russian,  has  adopted  Mediaeval  Latin  dozeiia  (from 
(luo(Jecim)  shows  how  convenient  an  arrangement  it  was 
found  to  huy  and  sell  by  the  dozen,  and  how  necessary  it 
was  to  have  a  special  word  for  it.  But  the  borrowing 
process  has  gone  farther  than  this.  If  it  were  asked  how 
many  sets  of  numerals  are  now  in  use  among  English- 
speaking  peojile  in  England,  the  probable  reply  would  be  one 
set,  the  regular  one,  two,  three,  etc.  There  exist,  however, 
two  borrowed  sets  as  well.  One  is  the  well-known  dicing- 
set,  ace,  deuce,  tray,  cater,  cinque,  size  ;  thus  size-ace  is  "  6 
:ind  one,"  cinques  or  sinks,  "  double  five."  These  came  to 
us  from  France,  and  correspond  with  the  common  French 
numerals,  except  ace,  which  is  Latin  as,  a  word  of  great 
philological  interest,  meaning  **  one."  The  other  borrowed 
set  is  to  be  found  in  the  Slang  Dictionary,  It  appears 
that  the  English  street-folk  have  adopted  as  a  means  of 
secret  communication  a  set  of  Italian  numerals  from  the 
organ-grinders  and  imnge-sellers,  or  by  other  ways 
through  which  Italian  or  Lingua  Franca  is  brought  into 
the  low  neighbourhoods  of  London.  In  so  doing,  thoy 
have  performed  a  philological  operation  not  only  curious, 
but  instructive.  By  copying  such  expressions  as  Italian 
due  iioldt,  ire  soldi,  as  equivalent  to  "twopence,"  "three- 
pence," the  word  saltee  becam-^  a  recognized  slang  term  for 
"  penny;  "  and  pence  are  reckoned  as  follows : — 


Oney  ml  fee         .         .  . 

Ddoe  saltee    .         •        •         • 
Tray  saltee         ,         .         . 
Qiiarii'Ter  saltee     .         «         . 
Cliiiiker  saltee  .         . 
Say  saltee    .... 
Say  oney  saltee  or  setter  saltee 
Say  dooe  saltee  or  otter  saltee 
Say  tray  saltee  or  nobba  saltee 


Id.  uno  soldo. 
2d.  due  soldi. 
3d.  tre  soldi. 
4d.  quattro  soldi, 
fid.  cinque  soldi. 
6d.  sei  soldi. 
7d.  sette  soldi. 
8d.  otto  soldi. 
9d.  uove  soldi. 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


2G!> 


bldL 
Idi. 


Say  qunrterer  saltee  or  dacha  saltee 
Say  clunker  saltre  or  dacha  oncy  saJtee 
Oney  beong         .         .         .         .         . 
A  heong  say  saltee 
Dooe  heong  say  saltee  or  madza  caroon 


lOd.  dieci  soldi, 
tld.  undid  soldi. 
Is. 

Is.  6d. 

2s.  6d.  (half  crown, 
mezza  corona.') 


m 


One  of  these  series  simply  adopts  Italian  numerals 
decimally.  But  the  other,  when  it  has  reached  6,  having* 
had  enough  of  novelty,  makes  7  by  **  six-one,"  and  so 
forth.  It  is  for  no  abstract  reason  that  6  is  thus  made  tho 
turning-point,  but  simply  becfi-  tlie  costermonger  is 
add;ng  pence  up  to  the  silver  .pence,  and  then  adding 
pence  again  up  to  the  shilling.  Thus  our  duodecimal  coinage 
has  led  tc  the  practice  of  counting  by  sixes,  and  produced  a 
philological  curiosity,  a  real  senary  notation. 

On  evidence  such  as  has  been  brought  forward  in  this 
essay,  the  apparent  relations  of  savage  to  civilized  culture, 
as  regards  the  Art  of  Counting,  may  now  be  briefly  stated 
in  conclusion.  The  principal  methods  to  which  the 
development  of  the  higher  arithmetic  are  due,  lie  outside 
the  problem.  They  are  mostly  ingenious  plans  of  express- 
ing numerical  relations  by  written  symbols.  Among  them 
are  the  Semitic  scheme,  and  the  Greek  derived  from  it,  of 
using  the  alphabet  as  a  series  of  numerical  symbols,  a  plan 
not  quite  discarded  by  ourselves,  at  least  for  ordinals,  as  in 
schedules  A,  B,  &c.  ;  the  use  of  initials  of  numeral  words 
as  ligures  for  the  numbers  themselves,  as  in  Greek  n  and 
A  for  5  and  10,  Roman  C  and  M  for  100  and  1,000,  and 
the  Indian  numerals  themselves,  if  their  originals  are 
the  initials  of  "  eka,"  "  dvi,"  "  tri,"  &c. ;  the  device  of 
expressing  fractions,  shown  in  a  rudimentary  stage  in  Greek 
y,  8',  for  ^,  ^,  y'  for  f ;  the  introduction  of  the  cipher  or 
zero,  and  the  arrangement  of  the  Indian  numerals  in  order, 
so  that  position  distinguishes  units,  tens,  hundreds,  &c. ; 
and  lastly,  the  modem  notation  of  decimal  fractions  by 
carrying  down  below  the  unit  the  proportional  order  which 

»  J.  C.  Hotten,  '  Slang  Dictionary,"  p.  218. 


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THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


for  ages  had  been  in  use  above  it.  The  ancient  Egyptian 
and  the  still-used  Roman  and  Chinese  numeration  are 
indeed  founded  on  savage  picture-writing,^  while  the  abacus 
and  the  swan-pan,  the  one  still  a  valuable  school-instru- 
ment, and  the  other  in  full  practical  use,  have  their  germ 
in  the  savage  counting  by  groups  of  objects,  as  when  South 
Sea  Islanders  count  with  cocoa-nut  stalks,  putting  a  little 
one  aside  every  time  they  come  to  10,  and  a  large  one  when 
they  come  to  100,  or  when  African  negroes  reckon  with 
pebbles  or  nuts,  and  every  time  they  come  to  5  pat  them 
aside  in  a  little  heap.' 

We  are  here  especially  concerned  with  gesture-counting 
on  the  fingers,  as  an  absolutely  savage  art  still  in  use  among 
children  and  peasants,  and  with  the  system  of  numeral 
words,  as  known  to  all  mankind,  appearing  scantily  among 
the  lowest  tribes,  and  reaching  within  savage  limits  to  deve- 
lopments which  the  highest  civilization  has  only  improved  in 
detail.  These  two  methods  of  computation  by  gesture  and 
word  tell  the  story  of  primitive  arithmetic  in  a  way  that  can 
be  hardly  perverted  or  misunderstood.  We  see  the  savage 
who  can  only  count  to  2  or  3  or  4  in  words,  but  can  go 
farther  in  dumb  show.  He  has  words  for  hands  and  fingers, 
feet  and  toes,  and  the  idea  strikes  liim  that  the  words  which 
describe  the  gesture  will  serve  also  to  express  its  meaning, 
and  they  become  his  numerals  accordingly.  This  did  not 
happen  only  once,  it  happened  among  different  races  in 
distant  regions,  for  such  terms  as  "  hand  "  for  5,  **  hand- 
one  "  for  6,  "  hands  "  for  10,  "  two  on  the  foot "  for  12, 
•*  hands  and  feet "  or  "  man  "  for  20,  "two  men  "  for  40,  etc., 
show  such  uniformity  as  is  due  to  common  principle,  but 
also  such  variety  as  is  due  to  independent  working-out. 
These  are  "  pointer-facts  "  which  have  their  place  and 
explanation  in  a  development-theory  of  culture,  while  a 
degeneration-theory  totally  fails  to  take  them  in.  They  are 
distinct  records  of  development,  and  of  independent  deve- 


»  •  Early  History  of  Mankind,'  p.  106. 

'  Ellis,  'Polyn.  Roa.'  vol.  i.  p.  91  ;  Klemm,  C.  G.  vol  ill  p.  883. 


THE   ART    OF    COUNTING. 


271 


lopment,  among  savage  tribes  to  whom  some  writers  on 
civilization  have  rashly  denied  the  very  faculty  of  self- 
improvement.  The  original  meaning  of  a  great  part  of  the 
stock  of  numerals  of  the  lower  races,  especially  of  those  from 
1  to  4,  not  suited  to  be  named  as  hand-numerals,  is  obscure. 
They  may  have  been  named  from  comparison  with  objects, 
in  a  way  which  is  shown  actually  to  happen  in  such  forms 
as  "together"  for  2,  "throw"  for  3,  "knot"  for  4;  but 
any  concrete  meaning  we  may  guess  them  to  have  once  had 
seems  now  by  modification  and  mutilation  to  have  passed 
out  of  knowledge. 

Remembering  how  ordinary  words  change  and  lose  their 
traces  of  original  meaning  in  the  course  of  ages,  and  that  in 
numerals  such  breaking  down  of  meaning  is  actually 
desirable,  to  make  them  fit  for  pure  arithmetical  symbols, 
we  cannot  wonder  that  so  large  a  proportion  of  existing 
numerals  should  have  no  discernible  etymology.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  1,  2,  3,  4,  among  low  and  high  races 
alike,  the  earliest  to  be  made,  and  therefore  the  earliest  to 
lose  their  primary  significance.  Beyond  these  low  numbers 
the  languages  of  the  higher  and  lower  races  show  a  remark- 
able difierence.  The  hand-and-foot  numerals,  so  prevalent 
and  unmist  tkeable  in  savage  tongues  like  Esquimaux  and 
Zulu,  are  scarcely  if  at  all  traceable  in  the  great  languages 
of  civilization,  such  as  Sanskrit  and  Greek,  Hebrew  and 
Ai'abic.  This  state  of  things  is  quite  conformable  to  the 
development-theory  of  language.  We  may  argue  that 
it  was  in  comparatively  recent  times  that  savages  arrived 
at  the  invention  of  hand-numerals,  and  that  there- 
fore the  etymology  of  such  numerals  remains  obvious.  But 
it  by  no  means  follows  from  the  non-appearance  of  such 
primitive  forms  in  cultured  Asia  and  Europe,  that  they  did 
not  exist  there  in  remote  ages ;  they  may  since  have  been 
rolled  and  battered  like  pebbles  by  the  stream  of  time,  till 
their  original  shapes  can  no  longer  be  made  out.  Lastly, 
among  savage  and  civilized  races  alike,  the  general  frame- 
work of  numeration    stands  throughout   the  world  as  an 


11 


\ii 


iijfe'ii 


!f»  '' 


;^''l' 


liPfl 


m 


Vix' 


I    ..   -it 


film} 


Wit 


U  r 


1 1  ,li 


272 


THE    ART    OF    COUNTING. 


abiding  monument  of  primseval  culture.  This  framework, 
the  all  but  universal  scheme  of  reckoning  by  fives,  tens,  and 
twenties,  shows  that  the  childish  and  savage  practice  of 
counting  on  fingers  and  toes  lies  at  the  foundation  of  our 
arithmetical  science.  Ten  seems  the  most  convenient 
arithmetical  basis  offered  by  systems  founded  on  hand- 
counting,  but  twelve  would  have  been  better,  and  duodecimal 
arithmetic  is  in  fact  a  protest  against  the  less  convenient 
decimal  arithmetic  in  ordhiary  use.  The  case  is  the  not 
uncommon  one  of  high  civilization  bearing  evident  traces  ^f 
the  rudeness  of  its  origin  in  ancient  barbaric  life. 


I 


PMP- 


M^iM^ 


CHAPTER  VIII. 


Hi 


M 


I  :l 


MYTHOLOGY. 

Mythic  Fancy  based,  like  other  thought,  on  Experience — Mythology  affords 
evidence  for  studying  laws  of  Imagination — Change  in  public  opinion  as 
to  credibility  of  Myths  -Myths  rationalized  into  Allegory  and  History — 
Ethnological  import  and  treatment  of  Slyth — Myth  to  be  studied  in  actual 
existence  and  growth  among  modern  savages  and  barbarians  —Original 
sources  of  Myth — Early  doctrines  of  general  animation  of  Nature — Per- 
sonification of  Sun,  Moon,  and  Stars  ;  Water-spout,  Sand-{iillar,  Kainbow, 
Waterfiill,  Pestilence  — Analogy  worked  into  Mytli  and  .Metaphor — Myths 
of  Rain,  Thunder,  &c. — Effect  of  Language  in  formation  of  Jlyth— 
Material  Pt-rsonification  prinmry,  Verbal  Personification  secondary — 
Grammatical  Gender,  male  and  female,  animate  and  inauimate,  in  relation 
to  Myth — Proper  Names  of  objects  in  relation  to  My^h— Meiual  State 
proper  to  promote  mythic  imagination  —  Doctrine  of  Werewolveh  — 
Phantasy  and  Fancy. 


Among  those  opinions  which  are  produced  by  a  little 
knowledge,  to  be  dispelled  by  a  little  more,  is  the  belief  in 
an  almost  boundless  creative  power  of  the  human  imagina- 
tion. The  superficial  student,  mazed  in  a  crowd  of  seem- 
ingly wild  and  lawless  fancies,  which  he  thinks  to  have  no 
reason  in  nature  nor  pattern  in  this  material  world,  at  first 
concludes  them  to  be  new  births  from  the  imagination  of  the 
poet,  the  tale-teller,  and  the  seer.  But  little  by  little,  in 
what  seemed  the  most  spontaneous  fiction,  a  more  compre- 
hensive study  of  the  sources  of  poetry  and  romance  begins 
to  disclose  a  cause  for  each  fancy,  an  education  that  has  led 
up  to  each  train  of  thought,  a  store  of  inherited  materials 
from  out  of  which  each  province  of  the  poet's  land  has  been 
shaped,  and  built  over,  and  peopled.  Backward  from  our 
own  times,  the   course  of  mental   history  may   be  triutil 

VOL.    I.  T 


>'?: 


'  Ml  • 

■■  '■■•.'tnl.'  ■ 

■!    JMtf 


m 


I'll 

h 


mi 


!  1 
It 


a 


mi 

V*-  r.tf 

m 

1' 

'■'?■;' 

r 

■  1  ■■" 

:0 

■ 

i   J 

h 

i 

274 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I.I 


I'  m 


n   / 


:']Miif 


through  the  changes  wrought  by  modern  schools  of  thought 
and  fancy,  upon  an  intellectual  inheritance  handed  down  to 
them  from  earlier  generations.  And  through  remoter 
periods,  as  we  recede  more  nearly  towards  primitive  condi- 
tions of  our  race,  the  threads  which  connect  new  thought 
with  old  do  not  always  vanish  from  our  sight.  It  is  in 
large  measure  possible  to  follow  them  as  clues  leading  back 
to  that  actual  experience  of  nature  and  life,  which  is  the 
ultimate  source  of  human  fancy.  What  Matthew  Arnold 
has  written  of  Man's  thoughts  as  he  floats  along  the  River 
of  Time,  is  most  true  of  his  mythic  imagination:— 

"  As  ia  the  world  on  the  banks 
So  is  the  mind  of  the  mail. 

•  •  • 

Only  the  tract  where  he  sails 

He  wots  of :  only  the  thoughts, 

Raised  by  the  objects  he  passes,  are  his." 

Impressions  thus  received  the  mind  will  modify  and  work 
upon,  transmitting  the  products  to  other  minds  in  shapes 
that  often  seem  new,  strange,  and  arbitrary,  but  which  yet 
result  from  processes  familiar  to  our  experience,  and  to  be 
found  at  work  in  our  own  individual  consciousness.  The 
office  of  our  thought  is  to  develope,  to  combine,  and  to 
derive,  rather  than  to  create ;  and  the  consistent  laws  it 
works  by  are  to  be  discerned  even  in  the  unsubstantial 
structures  of  the  imagination.  Here,  as  elsewhere  in  the 
universe,  there  is  to  be  recognized  a  sequence  from  cause  to 
effect,  a  sequence  intelligible,  definite,  and  where  knowledge 
reaches  the  needful  exactness,  even  calculable. 

Th^re  is  perhaps  no  better  subject-matter  through  which 
to  study  the  processes  of  the  imagination,  than  the  well- 
marked  incidents  of  mythical  story,  ranging  as  they  do 
through  every  known  period  of  civilization,  and  through  all 
the  physically  varied  tribes  of  mankind.  Here  Maui,  the 
New  Zealand  Sun-god,  fishing  up  the  island  with  his  en- 
chanted hook  from  the  bottom  of  the  sea,  will  take  his  placo 
in  company  with  the  Indian  Vishnu,  diving  to  the  depth  of  the 


1 


MYTHOLOGY. 


275 


;o  be 

The 
id  to 
LWS  it 

mtial 
\.w  the 

Lse  to 
rledge 

Iwhich 
well- 
sy   do 

[f^h  all 

i,  the 

s  en- 

placo 

of  the 


ocean  in  his  avatar  of  the  Boar,  to  bring  up  the  submerged 
earth  on  his  monstrous  tusks ;  and  here  Baiame  the  creator, 
whose  voice  the  rude  Australians  hear  m  tlie  rolling 
thunder,  will  sit  throned  by  the  side  of  Olympian  Zeus 
himself.  Starting  with  the  bold  rough  nature-myths  into 
which  the  savage  moulds  the  lessons  he  has  learnt  from  his 
childlike  contemplation  of  the  universe,  the  ethnographer 
can  follow  these  rude  fictions  up  into  times  when  they  were 
shaped  and  incorporated  into  complex  mythologic  systems, 
gracefully  artistic  in  Greece,  stiff  and  monstrous  in  Mexico, 
swelled  into  bombastic  exaggeration  in  Buddhist  Asia.  He 
can  watch  how  the  mythology  of  classic  Europe,  once  so 
true  to  nature  and  so  quick  with  her  ceaseless  life,  fell 
among  the  commentators  to  be  plastered  with  allegory  or 
euhemerized  into  dull  sham  history.  At  last,  in  the  midst 
of  modern  civilization,  he  finds  the  classic  volumes  studied 
rather  for  their  manner  than  for  their  matter,  or  mainly 
valued  for  their  antiquarian  evidence  of  the  thoughts  of 
former  times;  while  relics  of  structures  reared  with  skill 
and  strength  by  the  myth-makers  of  the  past  must  now  be 
sought  in  scraps  of  nursery  follc-lore,  in  vulgar  superstitions 
and  old  dpng  legends,  in  thoughts  and  allusions  carried  on 
from  ancient  days  by  the  perennial  stream  of  poetry  and 
romance,  in  fragments  of  old  opinion  which  still  hold  an  in- 
herited rank  gained  in  past  ages  of  intellectual  history. 
But  this  turning  of  mythology  to  account  as  a  means  of 
tracing  the  history  of  laws  of  mind,  is  a  branch  of  science 
scarcely  discovered  till  the  present  century.  Before 
entering  here  on  some  researches  belonging  to  it,  there  will 
be  advantage  in  glancing  at  the  views  of  older  mythologists, 
to  show  through  what  changes  their  study  has  at  length 
reached  a  condition  in  which  it  has  a  scientific  value. 

It  is  a  momentous  phase  of  the  education  of  mankind, 
when  the  regularity  of  nature  has  30  imprinted  itself  upon 
men's  minds,  that  they  begin  to  wonder  how  it  is  that  the 
ancient  legends  that  they  were  brought  up  to  hear  with  such 

reverent   delight,    should   describe   a  world    so    strangely 

T  2 


i  :  :■ 


'   f 


." 


■I-  ' 


51 


m 


i  1  i' 


^^H'  a 


r  M" 


U  V 


if  I'-'Ji  ,: 

h    :      .11.' 


;i 


I 


13 


1  ,r  t 


276 


MYTHOLOGY. 


different  from  their  own.  Why,  they  ask,  are  the  gods  and 
giants  and  monsters  no  longer  seen  to  lead  their  prodigious 
lives  on  earth — is  it  perchance  that  the  course  of  things  is 
changed  since  the  old  days  ?  Thus  it  seemed  to  Pausanias 
the  historian,  that  the  wide-grown  wickedness  of  the  world 
had  brought  it  to  pass  that  times  were  no  longer  as  of  old, 
when  Lykaon  was  turned  into  a  wolf,  and  Niobe  into  a 
stone,  when  men  still  sat  as  guests  at  table  with  the  gods, 
or  were  raised  like  Herakles  to  become  gods  themselves. 
Up  to  modern  times,  the  hypothesis  of  a  changed  world  has 
more  or  less  availed  to  remove  the  difficulty  of  belief  in 
ancient  wonder-tales.  Yet  though  always  holding  firmly  a 
partial  ground,  its  application  was  soon  limited  for  these 
obvious  reasons,  that  it  justified  falsehood  and  truth  alike 
with  even-handed  favour,  and  utterly  broke  down  that 
barrier  of  probability  Avhich  in  some  measure  has  always 
separated  fact  from  fancy.  The  Greek  mind  found  other 
outlets  to  the  problem.  In  the  words  of  Mr.  Grote,  the 
ancient  legends  were  cast  back  into  an  undefined  past,  to 
take  rank  among  the  hallowed  traditions  of  divine  or  heroic 
antiquity,  gratifying  to  extol  by  rhetoric,  but  repulsive  to 
scrutinize  in  argument.  Or  they  were  transformed  into 
shapes  more  familiar  to  experience,  as  when  Plutarch, 
telling  the  tale  of  Theseus,  begs  for  indulgent  hearers  to 
accept  mildly  the  archaic  story,  and  assures  them  that  he 
has  set  himself  to  purify  it  by  reason,  that  it  may  receive 
the  aspect  of  history.^  This  process  of  giving  fable  the 
aspect  of  histor}^,  this  profitless  art  of  transforming  untrue 
impossibilities  into  untrue  possibilities,  has  been  carried  on 
by  the  ancients,  and  by  the  moderns  after  them,  especially 
according  to  the  two  following  methods. 

Men  have  for  ages  been  more  or  less  conscious  of  that 
great  mental  district  lying  between  disbelief  and  belief,  where 
room  is  found  for  all  mythic  interpretation,  good  or  bad. 
It  being  admitted  that  some  legend  is  not  the  real  narrative 

•  Grote,  'History  of  Greece,'  vol.  i.  chaps,  ix.  xi  ;  Pausanias  viii.  2;  Plu- 
tarch. Theseus  1. 


>»?»• 


MYTHOLOGY. 


277 


)f  that 

where 

)r  bad. 

drrative 

2;  Plu- 


which  it  purports  to  be,  they  do  not  thereupon  wipe  it  out 
from  book  and  memory  as  simply  signifying  nothing,  but 
they  ask  what  original  sense  may  be  in  it,  out  of  what  older 
story  it  may  be  a  second  growth,  or  what  actual  event  or 
current  notion  may  have  suggested  its  development  into  the 
state  in  which  they  find  it?  Such  questions,  however, 
prove  almost  as  easy  to  answer  plausibly  as  to  set;  and 
then,  in  the  endeavour  to  obtain  security  that  these  off-hand 
answers  are  the  true  ones,  it  becomes  evident  that  the  problem 
admits  of  an  indefinite  number  of  apparent  solutions,  not 
only  different  but  incompatible.  This  radical  uncertainty 
in  the  speculative  interpretation  of  myths  is  forcibly  stated 
by  Lord  Bacon,  in  the  preface  to  his  *  Wisdom  of  the 
Ancients.'  "  Neither  am  I  ignorant,"  he  says,  "  how  fickle 
and  inconstant  a  thing  fiction  is,  as  being  subject  to  be 
drawn  and  wrested  any  way,  and  how  great  the  commodity 
of  wit  and  discourse  is,  that  is  able  to  apply  things  well,  yet 
so  as  never  meant  by  the  first  authors."  The  neod  of  such 
a  caution  may  be  judged  of  from  the  very  treatise  to  which 
Bacon  prefaced  it,  for  there  he  is  to  be  seen  plunging  head- 
long into  the  very  pitfall  of  which  he  had  so  discreetly 
warned  his  disciples.  He  undertakes,  after  the  manner  of 
not  a  few  philosophers  before  and  after  him,  to  interpret 
the  classic  myths  of  Greece  as  moral  allegories.  Thus  the 
story  of  Memnon  depicts  the  destinies  of  rash  young  men 
of  promise  ;  while  Perseus  spnbolizes  war,  and  when  of  the 
three  Gorgons  he  attacks  only  the  mortal  one,  this  means 
that  only  practicable  wars  are  to  be  attempted.  It  would 
not  be  easy  to  bring  out  into  a  stronger  light  the  difference 
between  a  fanciful  application  of  a  myth,  and  its  analysis 
into  its  real  elements.  For  here,  where  the  interpreter  be- 
lieved himself  to  be  reversing  the  process  of  myth-making, 
he  was  in  fact  only  carrying  it  a  stage  farther  in  the  old 
direction,  and  out  of  the  suggestion  of  one  train  of  thought 
evolving  another  connected  with  it  by  some  more  or  less 
remote  analogy.  Any  of  us  may  practise  this  simple  art, 
each  according  to  his  own  fancy.     If,  for  instance,  political 


li: 

I  Mm 

ii,;.: 

m 


:  md 


I'  i.  ■■ 


1 


1 1 ! 


m 

ft   '■!« 


If 


i-    ^i: 


ii78 


MYTHOLOGY. 


economy  happens  for  the  moment  tc  lie  uppermost  in  our 
mind,  we  may  with  due  gravity  expound  the  story  of 
Perseus  as  an  allegorj'  of  trade  :  Perseus  himself  is  Labour, 
and  he  finds  Andromeda,  who  is  Profit,  chained  and  ready 
to  be  devoured  by  the  monster  Capital ;  he  rescues  her, 
and  carries  her  oil'  in  triumph.  To  know  anything  of  poetry 
or  of  mysticism  is  to  know  this  reproductive  growth  of  fancy 
as  an  admitted  and  admired  intellectual  process.  But  when 
it  comes  to  sober  investigation  of  the  processes  of  mythology, 
the  attempt  to  penetrate  to  the  foundation  of  an  old  fancj' 
will  scarcely  be  helped  by  burying  it  yet  deeper  underneath 
a  new  one. 

Nevertheless,  allegory  has  had  a  share  in  the  development 
of  myths  wliich  no  interpreter  must  overlook.  The  fault  of 
the  rationalizer  lay  m  taking  allegory  beyond  its  proper 
action,  and  applying  it  as  a  universal  solvent  to  reduce  dark 
stories  to  transparent  sense.  The  same  is  true  of  the  other 
great  rationalizing  process,  founded  also,  to  some  extent,  on 
fact.  Nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  real  personages 
often  have  mythic  incidents  tacked  on  to  their  history,  and 
that  they  even  figure  in  tales  of  which  the  very  substance  is 
mythic.  No  one  disbelieves  in  the  existence  of  Solomon 
because  of  his  legendary  adventure  in  the  Valley  of  Apes,  nor 
of  Attila  because  he  figures  in  the  Nibelungen  Lied.  Sir 
Francis  Drake  is  made  not  less  but  more  real  to  us  by  the 
cottage  tales  which  tell  how  he  still  leads  the  Wild  Hunt 
over  Dartmoor,  and  still  rises  to  his  revels  when  they  beat 
at  Buckland  Abbey  the  drum  that  he  carried  round  the 
world.  The  mixture  of  fact  and  fable  in  traditions  of  great 
men  shows  that  legends  containing  monstrous  fancy  may  yet 
have  a  basis  in  historic  fact.  But,  on  the  strength  of  this, 
the  mythologists  arranged  systematic  methods  of  reducing 
legend  to  history,  and  thereby  contrived  at  once  to  stultify 
the  mythology  they  professed  to  explain,  and  to  ruin  the 
histor}-  they  professed  to  develope.  So  far  as  the  plan 
consisted  in  mere  suppression  of  the  marvellous,  a  notion  of 
its  trustworthiness  may  be  obtained,  as  Mr.  G.  W.  Cox  well 


mstmi 


I  ■!   I        IIIIM     - 


MYTHOLOGY. 


279 


and 
ice  is 
3mon 
nor 
Sii- 
the 
iunt 
beat 
d  the 
great 
ay  yet 
this, 
ucing 
Itultify 
in  the 
plan 
tion  of 
X  well 


puts  it,  in  rationalizing  Jack  the  Giant-Killer  by  leaving 
out  the  giants.  So  far  as  it  treated  legendary  wonders  as 
being  matter-of-fact  disguised  in  metaphor,  the  mere  naked 
statement  of  the  results  of  the  method  is  to  our  minds  its 
most  cruel  criticism.  Thus  already  in  classic  times  men 
were  declaring  that  Atlas  was  a  great  astronomer  who  taught 
the  use  of  the  sphere,  and  was  therefore  represented  with 
the  world  resting  on  his  shoulders.  To  such  a  pass  had 
come  the  decay  of  myth  into  comnionplaee,  that  the  great 
Heaven-god  of  the  Aryan  race,  the  living  personal  Heaven 
himself,  Zeus  the  Almighty,  was  held  to  have  been  a  king 
of  Krete,  and  the  Kretans  could  show  to  wondering  strangers 
his  sepulchre,  with  the  very  name  of  the  great  departed 
inscribed  upon  it.  The  modern  **  euhemerists  "  (so  called 
from  Euhemeros  of  Messenia,  a  great  professor  of  the  art 
in  the  time  of  Alexander)  in  part  adopted  the  old  interpre- 
tations, and  sometimes  fairly  left  their  Greek  and  Roman 
teachers  behind  in  the  race  after  prosaic  possibility.  They 
inform  us  that  Jove  smiting  the  giants  with  his  thunderbolts 
was  a  king  repressing  a  sedition  ;  Danae's  golden  shower 
was  the  money  with  which  her  guards  were  bribed ;  Pro- 
metheus made  clay  images,  whence  it  was  b  ^'perbolically 
said  that  he  created  man  and  woman  out  of  clay  ;  and  when 
Daidalos  was  related  to  have  made  figures  which  walked, 
this  meant  that  he  improved  the  shapeless  old  statues,  and 
separated  their  legs.  Old  men  still  remember  as  the  guides 
of  educated  opinion  in  their  j^outh  the  learned  books  in 
which  these  fancies  are  solemnly  put  forth ;  some  of  our 
school  manuals  still  go  on  quoting  them  with  respect,  and  a 
few  straggling  writers  carry  on  a  remnant  of  the  once 
famous  system  of  which  the  Abbe  Banier  was  so  distin- 
guished an  exponent.^  But  it  has  of  late  fallen  on  evil  days, 
and  mythologists  in  authority  have  treated  it  in  so  high- 
handed a  fashion  as  to  bring  it  into  general  contempt.  So 
far  has  the  feeUng  against  the  abuse  of  such  argument  gone, 

*  See  Banier ,'  La  Mythologie  et  les  Fables  expliquees  par  I'Histoire,'  Pari%, 
1738;  Lempriere,  '  Classical  Dictionary, '  etc. 


,1 


ll 


;itt; 


In 


1" 

'    ■■''»! ill 
!h:lPll 


: 


280 


MYTHOLOGY. 


V,  ll 


\  i!^ 


<J 


f     ' 


;l , 


■'-M 


!i      ) 


■f     ! 


that  it  is  now  really  desirable  to  warn  students  that  it  has  a 
reasonable  as  well  as  an  unreasonable  side,  and  to  remind 
them  that  some  wild  legends  undoubtedly  do,  and  therefore 
that  many  otliers  may,  contain  a  kernel  of  historic  truth. 

Learned  and  ingenious  as  the  old  systems  of  rationalizing 
myth  have  been,  there  is  no  doubt  that  they  are  in  great 
measure  destined  to  be  thrown  aside.     It  is  not  that  their 
interpretations  are  proved  impossible,  but  that  mere  possi- 
bility in  mythological  speculation  is  now  seen  to  be  such 
a  worthless  com)nodity,   that   every   investigator   devoutly 
wishes  there  were  not   such  plenty   of  it.     In   assigning 
origins  to  myths,  as  in  every  other  scientific  enquiry,  the 
fact  is  that  increased  information,  and  the  use  of  more 
stringent  canons  of  evidence,  have  raised  far  above  the  old 
level  the  standard  of  probability  required  to  produce  con- 
viction.    There  are  many  who  describe  our  own  time  as  an 
unbelieving  time,  but  it  is  by  no  means  sure  that  posterity 
will  accept  the  verdict.     No  doubt  it  is  a  sceptical  and  a 
critical  time,  but  then  scepticism  and  criticism  are  the  very 
conditions  for  the  attainment  of  reasonable  belief.     Thus, 
where  the   positive  credence  of  ancient  history  has  been 
affected,  it  is  not  that  the  power  of  receiving  evidence  has 
diminished,   but  that  the  consciousness  of  ignorance  has 
grown.     AVe   are   being   trained   to   the   facts   of  physical 
science,  which  we  can  test  and  test  again,  and  we  feel  it  a 
fall  from  this  high  level  of  proof  when  we  turn  our  minds 
to  the  old  records  which  elude  such  testing,  and  are  even 
admitted   on   all   hands  to   contain  statements  not  to  be 
relied  on.     Historical  criticism  becomes  hard  and  exacting, 
even  where  the  chronicle  records  events  not  improbable  in 
themselves ;  and  the  moment  that  the  story  falls  out  of  our 
scheme  of  the  world's  habitual  course,  the  ever  repeated 
question  comes  out  to  meet  it — Which  is  the  more  likely, 
that  so  unusual  an  event  should  have  really  happened,  or 
that  the  record  should  be  misunderstood  or  false  ?     Thus 
we  gladly  seek  for  sources  of  history  in  antiquarian  relics, 
in  undesigned  and  collateral  proofs,  in  documents  not  written 


MTTHOLOaT. 


281 


a 

id 
re 

ng 

3  at 

leir 
3si- 
ucb 
utly 

the 
naore 
e  old 

con- 
as  an 
,terity 
and  a 
e  very 
Tims, 
been 

ce  has 

•e  has 

liysical 

leel  it  a 
minds 
Ire  even 
to  be 
acting, 
,able  in 
of  our 
•epeated 
|e  likely, 
lened,  of 
Thvis 
ji  relics, 
»t  written 


to  be  chronicles.  But  can  any  reader  of  geology  say  we  are 
too  incredulous  to  believe  wonders,  if  the  evidence  carry 
any  fair  warrant  of  their  truth  ?  Was  there  ever  a  time 
when  lost  history  was  being  reconstructed,  and  existing 
history  rectifiod,  more  zealousl}'  than  they  are  now  by  a 
whole  army  of  travellers,  excavators,  searchers  of  old 
charters,  and  explorers  of  forgotten  dialects  ?  The  very 
myths  that  were  discarded  as  lying  fables,  prove  to  be 
sources  of  history  in  ways  that  their  makers  and  transmitters 
little  dreamed  of.  Their  meaning  has  been  misunderstood, 
but  they  have  a  meaning.  Every  tale  that  was  ever  told 
liiis  a  meaning  for  the  times  it  belongs  to ;  even  a  lie,  as 
the  Spanish  proverb  says,  is  a  lady  of  birth  ('*  la  mentira  es 
hija  de  algo  ").  Thus,  as  evidence  of  the  development  of 
thought,  as  records  of  long  past  belief  and  usage,  even  in 
some  measure  as  materials  for  the  history  of  the  nations 
owning  them,  the  old  myths  have  fairly  taken  their  place 
among  historic  facts  ;  and  with  such  the  modern  historian, 
so  able  and  willing  to  pull  down,  is  also  able  and  willing  to 
rebuild. 

Of  all  things,  what  mythologic  work  needs  is  breadth  of 
knowledge  and  of  handling.  Interpretations  made  to  suit  a 
narrow  view  reveal  their  weakness  when  exposed  to  a  wide 
one.  See  Herodotus  rationalizing  the  story  of  the  infant 
Cyrus,  exposed  and  suckled  by  a  bitch  ;  he  simply  relates 
that  the  child  was  brought  up  by  a  herdsman's  wife  named 
Spako  (in  Greek  Kyno),  whence  arose  the  fable  that  a  real 
bitch  rescued  and  fed  him.  So  far  so  good — for  a  single 
case.  But  does  the* story  ^  Romulus  and  Remus  likewise 
record  a  real  event,  mystirled  in  the  self-same  manner  by 
a  pun  on  a  nurse's  name,  which  happened  to  be  a  she- 
beast's  ?  Did  the  Roman  twins  also  really  hapj)en  to  be 
exposed,  and  brought  up  by  a  foster-mother  who  happened 
to  be  called  Lupa  ?  Positivel}^  the  *  Lempriere's  Diction- 
ary '  of  our  youth  (I  quote  the  16th  edition  of  1831)  gravely 
gives  this  as  the  origin  of  the  famous  legend.  Yet,  if  we 
look  properly  into  the  matter,  we  find  that  these  two  stories 


IW 


■■\\' 


r    ;r 


1  •:'*ii 


tif)  .11 


•I 


\ .: 


■  t  .1 


i'. 


ijf'i  j  i 


282 


ItTTTHOLOGY. 


1/ 


are  but  specimens  of  a  widesj)!  p".d  r.iythic  group,  itself  only 
fi  section  of  that  far  larger  body  of  traditions  in  which 
exposed  infants  are  saved  to  become  national  heroes.  For 
other  examples,  Slavonic  folk-lore  tells  of  the  she-wolf  and 
she-bear  that  suckled  those  superhuman  twins,  Waligora 
the  mountain-roller  and  Wyrwidab  the  oak-uprooter ; 
Germany  has  its  legend  of  Dieterich,  called  Wolfdieterich 
from  his  foster-mother  the  she-wolf;  in  India,  the  episode 
recurs  in  the  tales  of  Satavahana  and  the  lioness,  and  Sing- 
Baba  and  the  tigress  ;  legend  tells  of  Burta-Chino,  the  boy 
who  was  cast  into  a  lake,  and  preserved  by  a  she-wulf  to 
become  founder  of  the  Turkish  kingdom;  and  even  the 
savage  Yui'acards  of  Brazil  tell  of  their  divine  hero  Tiri, 
who  was  suckled  by  a  jaguar.^ 

Scientific  myth-interpretation,  on  the  contrary,  is  actually 
strengthened  by  such  comparison  of  similar  cases.  Where 
the  effect  of  "lew  knowledge  has  been  to  construct  rather 
than  to  destroy,  it  is  found  that  there  are  groups  of  mytli- 
interpretations  for  which  wider  and  deeper  evidence  makes 
a  wider  and  deeper  foundation.  The  principles  which 
underlie  a  solid  system  of  interpretation  are  reallj^  few  and 
simple.  The  treatment  of  similar  myths  from  different 
regions,  by  arranging  them  in  large  compared  groups,  makes 
it  possible  to  trace  in  mythology  the  operation  of  imaginative 
processes  recurring  with  the  evident  regularity  of  mental 
law  ;  and  thus  stories  of  which  a  single  instance  would  have 
been  a  mere  isolated  curiosity,  take  their  place  among 
well-marked  and  consistent  structures  of  the  human  mind. 
Evidence  like  this  will  again  and  again  drive  us  to  admit 
that  even  as  **  truth  is  stranger  thak  fiction,"  so  myth  may 
be  more  uniform  than  history. 

There  lies  within  our  reach,  moreover,  the  evidence  of 


fif 


>  Hanusch,  *SLiv.  Myth.'  p.  323;  Grimm,  D.  M.  p.  363;  Latham, 
'D<s(r.  Eth.'  vol.  ii,  p.  448  ;  I.  J.  Schmidt,  'Forschungen,'  p.  13;  J.  G. 
Miiller,  'Ainer.  Uritlig.'  p.  268.  See  also  Plutarch.  Parallela  xxxvi.  ; 
Campbell,  'Higidaud  Tales,'  vol.  i.  p.  278  ;  Max  Miillor,  'Chips,'  vol.  ii.  p. 
ley  ;  Tylor,  'Wild  Meu  and  Beast-children,'  iu  Anthropological  Review,  May 
1863. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


283 


h 
)r 
id 
ra 

sr; 
Lch 
jde 

ng- 
boy 
f  to 

Tiri, 

LuaUy 
Vliere 
ratlier 
tnytli- 

vv  and 

ffcvent 
makes 
iruitive 
mcutal 
Id  have 
ainoug 
mind, 
admit 
til  may 


hence 


Oi 


ka    xxxvi.  ; 

I'  vol.  u-  P- 
[eviow,  ^^"■y 


races  both  ancient  and  modem,  who  so  faithfully  represent 
the  state  of  thought  to  which  myth-development  belongs, 
as  still  to  keep  up  both  the  consciousness  of  meaning  in 
their  old  myths,  and  the  unstrained  unaffected  habit  of 
creating  new  ones.  Savages  have  been  for  untold  ages,  and 
still  are,  living  in  the  myth-making  stage  of  the  human 
mind.  It  was  through  sheer  ignorance  and  neglect  of  this 
direct  knowledge  how  and  by  what  manner  of  men  myths 
are  really  made,  that  their  simj^le  philosophy  has  come  to 
be  buried  under  masses  of  commentators'  rubbish.  Though 
nrvor  wholly  lost,  the  secret  of  mythic  interpretation  was 
all  but  forgotten.  Its  recovery  has  been  mainly  due  to 
modern  students  who  have  with  vast  labour  and  skill 
searched  the  ancient  language,  poetry,  and  folk-lore  of  our 
own  race,  from  the  cottage  tales  collected  by  the  brothers 
Grimm  to  the  Rig- Veda  edited  by  Max  Miiller.  Ary:in 
language  and  literature  now  open  out  with  wonderful 
range  and  clearness  a  view  of  the  early  stages  of  mythology, 
displaying  those  primitive  germs  of  the  poetry  of  nature, 
which  later  ages  swelled  and  distorted  till  childlike  fancy 
sank  into  superstitious  mystery.  It  is  not  proposed  here 
to  enquire  specially  into  this  Aryan  mythology,  of  which  so 
many  eminent  students  have  treated,  but  to  compare  some  of 
the  most  important  developments  of  mythology  among  the 
various  races  of  mankind,  especially  in  order  to  determine 
the  general  relation  of  the  myths  of  savage  tribes  to  the 
mytlis  of  civilized  nations.  The  argument  does  not  aim  at  a 
general  discussion  of  the  mythology  of  the  world,  numbei's 
of  important  topics  being  left  untouched  which  would  have 
to  be  considered  in  a  general  treatise.  The  topics  chosen 
are  mostly  such  as  are  fitted,  by  the  strictness  of  evidence 
and  argument  applying  to  them,  to  make  a  sound  basis  for 
the  treatment  of  myth  as  bearing  on  the  general  ethno- 
logical problem  of  the  development  of  civilization.  The 
general  thesis  maintained  is  that  Myth  arose  in  the  savage 
condition  prevalent  in  remote  ages  among  the  whole  human 
race,  that  it  remains  comparatively  unchanged  among  the 


in 


-M 
ivm 

m 


\  .Ml 


(., 


1     1:,.^ 
1 


I   • 


284 


MYTHOLOGY. 


modern  rude  tribes  who  have  departed  least  from  these 
primitive  conditions,  while  higher  and  later  grades  of 
civilization,  partly  by  retaining  its  actual  principles,  and 
partly  by  carrying  on  its  inherited  results  in  the  form  of 
ancestral  tradition,  continued  it  not  merely  in  toleration 
but  in  honour. 

To  the  human  intellect  in  its  early  childlike  state  may  be 
assigned  the  origin  and  first  development  of  myth.  It  is 
true  that  learned  critics,  taking  up  the  study  of  mythology 
at  the  wrong  end,  have  almost  habitually  failed  to  appre- 
ciate its  childlike  ideas,  conventionalized  in  poetry  or 
disguised  as  chronicle.  Yet  the  more  we  compare  the 
mythic  fancies  of  different  nations,  in  order  to  discern  the 
common  thoughts  which  underlie  their  resemblances,  the 
more  ready  we  shall  be  to  admit  that  in  our  childhood  we 
dwelt  at  the  very  gates  of  the  realm  of  myth.  In  mythology, 
the  child  is,  in  a  deeper  sense  than  we  are  apt  to  use  the 
phrase  in,  father  of  the  man.  Thus,  when  in  surveying 
the  quaint  fancies  and  wild  legends  of  the  lower  tribes,  we 
find  the  mythology  of  the  world  at  once  in  its  most  distinct 
and  most  rudimentary  form,  we  may  here  again  claim  the 
savage  as  a  representative  of  the  childhood  of  the  human 
race.  Here  Ethnology  and  Comparative  ^Mythology  go 
hand  in  hand,  and  the  development  of  Myth  forms  a  con- 
sistent part  of  the  development  of  Culture.  If  savage 
races,  as  the  nearest  modern  representatives  of  primueval 
culture,  show  in  the  most  distinct  and  unchanged  state 
the  rudimentary  mythic  conceptions  thence  to  be  traced 
onward  in  the  course  of  civilization,  then  it  is  reasonable 
for  students  to  begin,  so  far  as  may  be,  at  the  beginning. 
Savage  mythology  may  be  taken  as  a  basis,  and  then  the 
myths  of  more  civilized  races  may  be  displayed  as  com- 
positions sprung  from  like  origin,  though  more  advanced 
in  art.  This  mode  of  treatment  proves  satisfactory  through 
almost  all  the  branches  of  the  en(iuiry,  and  eminently  so  in 
investigating  those  most  beautiful  of  poetic  fictions,  to 
which  may  be  given  the  title  of  Nature-Myths. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


28.J 


First  and  foremost  among  the  causes  which  transfigure 
into  m3-ths  the  facts  of  daily  experience,  is  the  belief  in  tho 
animation  of  all  nature,  rising  at  its  highest  pitch  to  per- 
sonification. This,  no  occasional  or  hypothetical  action  of 
the  mind,  Is  inextricably  bound  in  with  that  primitive 
mental  state  where  man  recognizes  in  every  detail  of  his 
world  the  operation  of  personal  life  and  will.  This  doctrine 
of  Animism  will  be  considered  elsewhere  as  affecting 
philosophy  and  religion,  but  here  we  have  only  to  do  with  its 
bearing  on  mythology.  To  the  lower  tribes  of  man,  sun 
and  stars,  trees  and  rivers,  winds  and  clouds,  becomo 
personal  animate  creatures,  leading  lives  conformed  to 
human  or  animal  analogies,  and  performing  their  special 
functions  in  the  universe  with  the  aid  of  limbs  like  beasts, 
or  of  artificial  instruments  like  men ;  or  what  men's  eyes 
behold  is  but  the  instrument  to  be  used  or  the  material  to 
be  shaped,  while  behind  it  there  stands  some  prodigious  but 
yet  half  human  creatui'e,  who  grasps  it  with  his  hands  or 
blows  it  with  his  breath.  The  basis  on  which  such  ideas 
as  these  are  built  is  not  to  be  narrowed  down  to  poetic 
fancy  and  transformed  metajihor.  They  rest  upon  a  broad 
philosophy  of  nature,  early  and  crude  indeed,  but  thoughtful, 
consistent,  and  quite  really  and  seriously  meant. 

Let  us  put  this  doctrine  of  universal  vitality  to  a  test  of 
direct  evidence,  lest  readers  new  to  the  subject  should 
suppose  it  a  modern  philosophical  fiction,  or  think  that  if 
the  lower  races  really  express  such  a  notion,  they  may  do  so 
only  as  a  poetical  way  of  talking.  Even  in  civilized 
countries,  it  makes  its  appearance  as  the  child's  early 
theory  of  the  outer  world,  nor  can  we  fail  to  see  how  this 
comes  to  pass.  The  first  beings  that  children  learn  to  under- 
stand something  of  are  human  beings,  and  especially  their 
own  selves ;  and  the  first  explanation  of  all  events  will  be 
the  human  explanation,  as  though  chairs  and  sticks  and 
wooden  horses  were  actuated  by  the  same  sort  of  personal 
will  as  nurses  and  children  and  kittens.  Thus  infants  take 
their  first  step  in  mythology  by   contriving,  like  Cosett« 


U  ■ 


m 

If    ■  • ' 

•V.    'M  t 

ill. II! 


ii  m 


I   5 1  '■• 


:!i'?l! 


.,»-^.J  -•**-. 


"•<Tni«  •■k-o^.Aw^l . 


280 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I  , 


iiv 


I  II 


with  her  doll,  **  se  figurer  que  quelque  chose  est  quelqu'un  ; 
and  the  way  in  which  this  childlike  theory  has  to  be 
unlearnt  in  the  course  of  education  shows  how  primitive  it 
is.  Even  among  full-grown  civilized  Europeans,  as  Mr. 
Orote  appositely  remarks,  "The  force  of  momentary 
passion  will  often  suffice  to  supersede  the  acquired  habit, 
and  even  an  intelligent  man  may  be  impelled  in  a  moment 
of  agonizing  pain  to  kick  or  beat  the  lifeless  object  from 
which  he  has  suffered."  In  such  matters  the  savage  mind 
well  represents  the  childish  stage.  The  wild  native  of 
Brazil  would  bite  the  stone  he  stumbled  over,  or  the  arrow 
that  had  wounded  him.  Such  a  mental  condition  may  be 
traced  along  the  course  of  history,  not  merely  in  impulsive 
habit,  but  in  formally  enacted  law.  The  rude  Kukis  of 
Southern  Asia  were  very  scrupulous  in  carrying  out  their 
simple  law  of  vengeance,  life  for  life ;  if  a  tiger  killed  a 
Kuki,  his  family  were  in  disgrace  till  they  had  retaliated  by 
killing  and  eating  this  tiger,  or  another ;  but  further,  if  a 
man  was  killed  by  a  fall  from  a  tree,  his  relatives  would 
take  theii'  revenge  by  cutting  the  tree  down,  and  scattering 
it  in  chips.*  A  modern  king  of  Cochin- China,  when  one  of 
his  ships  sailed  badly,  used  to  put  it  in  the  pillory  as  he 
would  any  other  criminal.^  In  classical  times,  the  stories 
of  Xerxes  flogging  the  Hellespont  and  Cyrus  draining  the 
Gyndes  occur  as  cases  in  point,  but  one  of  the  regular 
Athenian  legal  proceedings  is  a  yet  more  striking  relic. 
A  court  of  justice  was  held  at  the  Prytaneum,  to  try  any 
inanimate  object,  such  as  an  axe  or  a  piece  of  wood  or 
stone,  which  had  caused  the  death  of  anyone  without 
proved  human  agency,  and  this  wood  or  stone,  if  con- 
demned, was  in  solemn  form  cast  beyond  the  border.*^ 
The  spirit  of  this  remarkable  procedure  reappears  in  the 
old  English  law  (repealed  in  the  present  reign),  whereby  noi 


Hi 


'  Macrae  in  '  As.  Kes.'  vol  vii.  p  189. 
"  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asieii,*  vol.  i.  p.  61. 

■  Gri)tc,  vol.  iii.  p.  104  ;  vol.  v.  p.  22  ;  Herodot.  i.  189  ;  vii.  34 ;  Porphyr. 
de  Abstiuentia,  ii.  30 ;  Pausan.  i.  28  ;  Pollux,  '  Oaomasticou.' 


"^■•-*-^'-  --•-■^■i-'it-TT-r  I 


MYTHOLOGY. 


287 


iories 
g  the 
egular 
relic, 
py  any 
»od  or 
ithout 
con- 
jrder.** 
in  the 
by  not 


Drphyr. 


only  a  beast  that  kills  a  man,  but  a  cart-wheel  that  runs  over 
him,  or  a  tree  that  falls  on  him  and  kills  him,  is  deodand,  or 
given  to  God,  i.  e.,  forfeited  and  sold  for  the  poor:  as  Brac- 
ton  says,  **  Omnia  qusB  movent  ad  mortem  sunt  Deodanda." 
Dr.  Reid  comments  on  this  law,  declaring  that  its  intention 
was  not  to  punish  the  cx  or  the  cart  as  criminal,  but  "to 
inspire  the  people  with  a  sacred  regard  to  the  life  cf  man."* 
But  his  argument  rather  serves  to  show  the  worthlessness 
of  ofF-hand  speculations  on  the  origin  of  law,  like  his  own 
in  this  matter,  unaided  by  the  indispensable  evidence  of 
history  and  ethnography.  An  example  from  modem  folk- 
lore' shows  still  at  its  utmost  stretch  this  primitive  fancy 
that  inert  things  are  alive  and  conscious.  The  pathetic 
custom  of  **  telling  the  bees  "  when  the  master  or  mistress 
of  a  house  dies,  is  not  unknown  in  our  own  country.  But 
in  Germany  the  idea  is  more  fully  worked  out ;  and  not 
only  is  the  sad  message  given  to  every  bee-hive  in  the 
garden  and  every  beast  in  the  stall,  but  every  sack  of  corn 
must  be  touched  and  everything  in  the  house  shaken,  that 
they  may  know  the  master  is  gone.' 

Animism  takes  in  several  doctrines  which  so  forcibly 
conduce  to  personification,  that  savages  and  ba  barians, 
apparently  without  an  effort,  can  give  consistent  individual 
life  to  phenomena  that  our  utmost  stretch  of  fancy  only 
avails  to  personify  in  conscious  metaphor.  An  idea  of 
pervading  life  and  will  in  nature  far  outside  modern  limits, 
a  belief  in  personal  souls  animating  even  what  we  call 
inanimate  bodies,  a  theory  of  transmigration  of  souls  as 
well  in  life  as  after  death,  a  sense  of  crowds  of  spiritual 
beings  sometimes  flitting  through  the  air,  but  sometimes 
also  inhabiting  trees  and  rocks  and  waterfalls,  and  so  lend- 
ing their  own  personality  to  such  material  objects — all  these 
thoughts  work  in  mythology  with  such  manifold  coinci- 
dence, as  to  make  it  hard  indeed  to  unravel  their  separate 
action. 

*  Rt'id,  'Essays,' vol.  iii.  p.  113. 

2  Wuttko,  'Volksaberglaube.'p.  210. 


P\^ 


til 

■lip 
nil 


I.! 
■:,i ' 


■  Hm 

m 


'i(  i  i ! 
Mi 


M 


I 


ia 


'r 


I  *. 


■  -t^l^l->*i^.fc,^a^ 


•     IIWIBPI  BWl'llt    -J.     il»^ 


288 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Ill 


I /I' 


Such  animistic  origin  of  nature-myths  shows  out  very 
clearly  in  the  great  cosmic  group  of  Sun,  Moon,  and  Stars. 
In  early  philosophy  throughout  the  world,  the  Sun  and 
Moon  are  alive  and  as  it  were  human  in  their  nature. 
Usually  contrasted  as  male  and  female,  they  nevertheless 
differ  in  the  sex  assigned  to  each,  as  well  as  in  their 
relations  to  one  another.  Among  the  Mbocobis  of  South 
America,  the  Moon  is  a  man  and  the  Sun  his  wife,  and  the 
story  is  told  how  she  once  fell  down  and  an  Indian  put  her 
up  again,  but  she  fell  a  second  time  and  set  the  forest 
blazing  in  a  deluge  of  fire.^  To  display  the  o[)posite  of  this 
idea,  and  at  the  same  time  to  illustrate  the  vivid  fancy 
with  which  savages  can  personify  the  heavenly  bodies,  we 
may  read  the  following  discussion  concerning  eclipses, 
between  certain  Algonquin  Indians  and  one  of  the  early 
Jesuit  missionaries  to  Canada  in  the  17th  century,  P'ather 
Le  Jeune  : — "  Je  leur  ay  demande  d'ou  venoit  I'Eelipse  de 
Lune  et  de  Soleil ;  ils  m'ont  respondu  que  la  Lune  s'ejlip- 
soit  ou  paroissoit  noire,  a  cause  qu'elle  tenoit  son  fils  entre 
ses  bras,  qui  empeschoit  que  Ton  ne  vist  sa  clarte.  Si  la 
Lune  a  un  fils,  elle  est  mariee,  ou  I'a  ete,  leur  dis-je.  Oiiy 
dea,  me  dirent-ils,  le  Soleil  est  son  mary,  qui  marche  tout 
le  jour,  et  elle  toute  la  nuict ;  et  s'il  s'eclipse,  ou  s'il 
s'obscurcit,  c'est  qu'il  prend  aussi  par  fois  le  fils  qu'il  a  eu 
de  la  Lune  entre  ses  bras.  Oii}',  mais  ny  la  Lune  ny  le 
Soleil  n'ont  point  de  bras,  leur  disois-je.  Tu  n'as  point 
d'esprit ;  ils  tiennent  tousiours  leurs  arcs  bandes  deuant 
eux,  voila  pourquoy  leurs  bras  ne  paroissent  point.  Et  sur 
qui  veulent-ils  tirer?  He  qu'en  scauons  nous?"^  A 
mythologically  important  legend  of  the  same  race,  the 
Ottawa  story  of  Iosco,  describes  Sun  and  Moon  as  brother 
and  sister.  Two  Indians,  it  is  said,  sprang  through  a 
chasm   in  the   sky,    and  found  themselves   in  a  pleasant 

*  D'Orbigny,    '  L'Homme  Amdricain,'  voL  ii.   p.    102.     See  also  De  la 

Borde,  'Caniibcs,'  p.  525. 

^  I.e  Jeuiie  in   '  Kolations  Jes  Jesuites  dans  la  Nouvelle  France,'   1634, 
p.  2G.     See  Charlevoix,  '  Nouvelle  Fiance,'  vol  ii.  p.  170. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


2«i^ 


tout 


evi 

rle 
loint 
Lant 
Bur 
A 
the 
Ither 
\h  a 
Isjint 


la 


1634, 


moonlit  land ;  there  they  saw  the  Moon  approaching  as 
from  behind  a  hill,  they  knew  her  at  the  first  sight,  she  was 
an  aged  woman  with  white  face  and  pleasing  air ;  speaking 
kindly  to  them,  she  led  them  to  her  brother  the  Sun,  and 
he  carried  them  with  him  in  his  course  and  sent  them  home 
with  promises  of  happy  life.^  As  the  Egyptian  Osiris  and 
Isis,  identified  with  Sun  and  Moon,  were  at  once  brother  and 
sister,  and  husband  and  wife,  so  it  was  with  the  Peruvian  Sun 
and  Moon,  and  thus  the  sister-marriage  of  the  Incas  had  in 
their  religion  at  once  a  meaning  and  a  justification.^  The 
myths  of  other  countries,  where  such  relations  of  sex  may 
not  appear,  carry  on  the  same  lifelike  personification  in 
telling  the  ever-reiterated,  never  tedious  tale  of  day  and 
night.  Thus  to  the  IMexicans  it  was  an  ancient  hero  who, 
when  the  old  sun  was  burnt  out,  and  had  left  the  world  in 
darkness,  sprang  into  a  huge  fire,  descended  into  the  shades 
below,  and  arose  deified  and  glorious  in  the  east  as  Tonatiuh 
the  Sun.  After  him  there  leapt  in  another  hero,  but  now 
the  fire  had  grown  dim,  and  he  arose  only  in  milder  radiance 
as  Metztli  the  Moon.^ 

If  it  be  objected  that  all  this  may  be  mere  expressive 
form  of  speech,  like  a  modern  poet's  fanciful  metaphor, 
there  is  evidence  which  no  such  objection  can  stand  against. 
When  the  Aleutians  thought  that  if  any  one  gave  oft'ence 
to  the  moon,  he  would  fling  down  stones  on  the  offender 
and  kill  him,*  or  when  the  moon  came  down  to  an  Indian 
squaw,  appearing  in  the  form  of  a  beautiful  woman  with  a 
child  in  her  arms,  and  demanding  an  offering  of  tobacco 
and  fur  robes,^  what  conceptions  of  personal  life  could  be 

>  Schoolcraft,  'Algic  Researches,'  vol.  ii.  p.  54;  compare  'Tanner's 
Narrative,'  p,  317  ;  see  also  'Prose  Edda,'  i.  11  ;  'Early  Hist,  of  Mankiml.' 
p.  327. 

2  Prescott,  'Peru,'  vol.  i.  p.  86  ;  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega,  'Comra.  Real'  L 

0.  4. 

•  Torquemada,  '  Monarciuia  Indiana,'  vi.  42  ;  Clavigero,  vol.  ii.  p.  9  ; 
Sahagun  in  KinRsborougli,  '  Antiquities  of  Mexico.* 

•*  Bustian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  59. 

»  Le  Jeune,  in  'Relations  des  J^suites  dans  la  Nouvelle  France,'  mO, 
p.  88. 

VOL.   I.  TT 


H^^ 


mi 


»l,i  it'll 


1  ;;*^ 

i 

i 


m 


290 


MYTHOLOGY. 


■■  i     r 


more  distinct  than  these  ?  "When  the  Apache  Indian 
pointed  to  the  sky  and  asked  the  white  man,  "  Do  you 
not  believe  that  God,  this  Sun  (que  Dios,  este  Sol)  sees 
what  we  do  and  punishes  us  when  it  is  evil  ?  "  it  is  im- 
possible to  say  that  this  savage  was  talking  in  rhetorical 
simile.'  There  was  something  in  the  Homeric  contemplation 
of  the  living  personal  Helios,  that  was  more  and  deeper 
than  metaphor.  Even  in  far  later  ages,  we  may  read  of  the 
outcry  that  arose  in  Greece  against  the  astronomers,  those 
blasphemous  materialists  who  denied,  not  the  divinity  only, 
but  the  very  personality  of  the  sun,  and  declared  him  a  huge 
hot  ball.  Later  again,  how  vividly  Tacitus  brings  to  view 
the  old  personification  dying  into  simile  among  the 
Romans,  in  contrast  with  its  still  enduring  religious  vigour 
among  the  German  nations,  in  the  record  of  Boiocalcus 
pleading  before  the  Roman  legate  that  his  tribe  should 
not  be  driven  from  their  lands.  Looking  toward  the  sun, 
and  calling  on  the  other  heavenly  bodies  as  though,  says 
the  historian,  they  had  been  there  present,  the  German 
chief  demanded  of  them  if  it  were  their  will  to  look  down 
upon  a  vacant  soil  ?  (Solem  deinde  respiciens..  et  csetera 
sidera  vocans,  quasi  coram  interrogabat,  vellentne  contueri 
inane  solum  ?  )  ^ 

So  it  is  with  the  stars.  Savage  mythology  contains 
many  a  story  of  them,  agreeing  through  all  other  difference 
in  attributing  to  them  animate  life.  They  are  not  merely 
talked  of  in  fancied  personality,  but  personal  action  is  attri- 
buted to  them,  or  they  are  even  declared  once  to  have  lived 
on  earth.  The  natives  of  Australia  not  only  say  the  stars 
in  Orion's  belt  and  scabbard  are  young  men  dancing  a 
corroboree ;  they  declare  that  Jupiter,  whom  they  call 
**  Foot  of  Day  "  (Ginabong-Bearp),  was  a  chief  among  the 
Old  Spirits,  that  ancient  race  who  were  translated  to  heaven 
before  man  came  on  earth.^  The  Esquimaux  did  not  stop 
short  at  calling  the  stars  of  Orion's  belt  the  Lost  Ones,  and 

*  Froebel,  '  Central  America,'  p.  490.  •  Tac.  Ann.  xiiL  65. 

•  Stanbridge,  in  '  Tr.  Elli.  Soc'  vol.  i.  p.  801. 


11.^1 


N    t 


MYTHOLOGY. 


291 


itains 
krence 
levely 
1  attri- 
lived 
stars 
|ing  a 
call 
Ig  the 
leaven 
|t  stop 
5,  and 

)5. 


telling  a  tale  of  their  being  seal-hunters  who  missed  their 
way  home ;  but  they  distinctly  held  that  the  stars  were  ii\ 
old  times  men  and  animals,  before  they  went  up  into  the 
sky.*  So  the  North  American  Indians  had  more  than 
superficial  meaning  in  calling  the  Pleiades  the  Dancers,  and 
the  morning-star  the  Day-bringer ;  for  among  them  stories 
are  told  like  that  of  the  lowas,  of  the  star  that  an  Indian 
had  long  gazed  upon  in  childhood,  and  who  came  down  and 
talked  with  him  when  he  was  once  out  hunting,  weary  and 
luckless,  and  led  him  to  a  place  where  there  was  much 
game.,^  The  Kasia  of  Bengal  declare  that  the  stars  were  once 
men :  they  climbed  to  the  top  of  a  tree  (of  course  the  great 
heaven-tree  of  the  mj'tliology  of  so  many  lands),  but  others 
below  cut  the  trunk  and  left  them  up  there  in  the  branches."'' 
With  such  savage  conceptions  as  guides,  the  original  mean- 
ing in  the  familiar  classic  personification  of  stars  can 
scarcely  be  doubted.  The  explicit  doctrine  of  the  anima- 
tion of  stars  is  to  be  traced  through  past  centuries,  and 
down  to  our  own.  Origen  declares  that  the  stars  are 
animate  and  rational,  moved  with  such  order  and  reason  as 
it  would  be  absurd  to  say  irrational  creatures  could  fulfil. 
Pamphilius,  in  his  apology  for  this  Father,  lays  it  down 
that  whereas  some  have  held  the  luminaries  of  heaven  to  be 
animate  and  rational  creatures,  while  others  have  held  them 
mere  spiritless  and  senseless  bodies,  no  one  may  call 
another  a  heretic  for  holding  either  view,  for  there  is  no 
open  tradition  on  the  subject,  and  even  ecclesiastics  have 
thought  diversely  of  it.*  It  is  enough  to  mention  here  the 
well-known  mediaeval  doctrine  of  star-souls  and  star-angels, 
so  intimately  mixed  up  with  the  delusions  of  astrology.  In 
our  own  time  the  theory  of  the  animating  souls  of  stars 
finds  still  here  and  there  an  advocate,  and  De  Maistre, 


'  Crauz,  '  Gronland,'  p.  295  ;  Hayes,  '  Arctic  Boat  Journey,'  p.  254. 

•  Schoolcraft,   *  Indian  Tribes,'  part  iii.  p.   276 ;   see  also  De  la  Borde, 
'Caraibea,'  p.  525. 

»  Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth.'  vol.  i.  p.  119. 

*  Origen.  de  Priucipiis,  L  7,  3  ;  PamphiL  Apolog.  pro  Origiue,  ix.  84. 

V  2 


:  5   ..>     i 
^  >   ■  I      V 


i>  • 


292 


MYTHOLOGY. 


N  r 


'ii!: 


prince  and  leader  of  reactionary  philosophers,  maintains 
against  modern  astronomers  the  ancient  doctrine  of  per- 
sonal will  in  astronomic  motion,  and  even  the  theory  of 
animated  planets.^ 

Poetry  has  so  far  kept  alive  in  our  minds  the  old  anima- 
tive  theory  of  nature,  that  it  is  no  great  effort  to  us  to  fancy 
the  waterspout  a  huge  giant  or  sea-monster,  and  to  depict 
in  what  we  call  appropriate  metaphor  its  march  across  the 
fields  of  ocean.  But  where  such  forms  of  speech  are  current 
among  less  educated  races,  they  are  underlaid  by  a  distinct 
prosaic  meaning  of  fact.  Tlius  the  waterspouts  which  the 
Japanese  see  so  often  off  their  coasts  are  to  them  long-tailed 
dragons,  **  flying  up  into  the  air  with  a  swift  and  violent 
motion,"  wherefore  they  call  them  "tatsmaki,"  "spouting 
dragons."^  Waterspouts  are  believed  by  some  Chinese  to 
be  occasioned  by  the  ascent  and  descent  of  the  driigon ; 
although  the  monster  is  never  seen  head  and  tail  at  once  for 
clouds,  fishermen  and  sea-side  folk  catch  occasional  glimpses 
of  him  ascending  from  the  water  and  descending  to  it.' 
In  the  mediteval  Chronicle  of  John  of  Bromton  there  is 
mentioned  a  wonder  which  happens  about  once  a  month  in 
the  Gulf  of  Satalia,  on  the  Pamphylian  coast.  A  great 
black  dragon  seems  to  come  in  the  clouds,  letting  down  his 
head  into  the  waves,  while  his  tail  seems  fixed  to  the  sky, 
and  this  dragon  draws  up  the  waves  to  him  with  such  avidity 
that  even  a  laden  ship  would  be  taken  up  on  high,  so  that  to 
avoid  this  danger  the  crews  ought  to  shout  and  beat  boards 
to  drive  the  dragon  off.  However,  concludes  the  chronicler, 
some  indeed  say  that  this  is  not  a  dragon,  but  the  sun  draw- 
ing up  the  water,  which  seems  more  true.*  The  Moslems  still 
account  for  waterspouts  as  caused  by  gigantic  demons,  such 
as  that  one  described  in  the   "Arabian  Nights:" — "The 


|if' 


iiiiii'; 


m 


*  De  Maistre,  'Soirees  do  Saint- Petersbourg,*  vol.  iL  p.  210,  see  184. 
^  Kiieiii])fer,  '  Jajiaii,'  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  684. 

*  Doolittlo,  'Chinese,'  vol.  ii,  p.  265  ;  see  Ward,  'Hindoos,'  vol.  i.  p.  140 
(India's  elephants  drinking). 

*  Chron.  Joh.  Bromtou,  in  '  Hist.  Angl.  Scriptores,'  x.  Ric.  I.  p.  1216. 


^lYTHOLOGr 

'«  to  know  how  how  far  it  ia  s  "S  «  r^"""^  "''"  ""» 
""«">»•  But  this  doubt  in  „„  ^  '""' ''""'  '"■■  '■"""ifully 
animistic  meaning,  of  which  theZfr:  "="'"^' "^  ""o"""" 
following  story  of  a  "gre.t  ^p!  ""  ''"'='"'"' '"  "'e 

^a.-barous  East  African  tri  I  a'T"' "  "'"■'■'">'  """ong  •■. 
D-  I"-«Pf  of  a  grea  sC^;,,,j,  ".''■^  "^  *'«  WaniU  t'oM 
«ea,  reaching  fro,„  the  st  "  ,  '  'T'"""^  ^^™  <»"  «' 
eapecall,.  during  heavy  T^n  'Wf/-,'""'  'PP'-^'^S 
missionary.,  "that  this  wa,  «!'  "  "'"">■"  «VS  the 

Out  of  the  simihu.  phenreln    '^f'' '"'  "  ™'«-Pont.- 

similar  group  of  myths      TrM".         "'"•"  ''"^  "■•'•^«'  « 
sand-piilarof  the  de  er;  to^  '""  '"'"''''^  *■«  whirlin* 

jinn,  and  the  ^JmL^'^.'^ri'"''''  "'S'"  "' "■>  e  ^ 
To  traveller  after  ttaveUer  iZ  ^  """'  "  *  ''<^"'"»  (P'h«Po). 
»1-Pes  gliding  majest  ;  I^^^f  ^.^  «/  '^ese  .nonstroui 
occurs  that  thewell-remembered  M  K-  f '  ""^  "'"»«'" 
-s  rest  upon  person.^  o's  of  u''™ ''f ''f " "^-^P" 
«<'lves,  as  the  gigantic  demons  L^n  r;'"'""""'^  "««>- 

-ow  so  naturally  shape  them"  ^'°''  ''"'^  '^''»  ^ven 

Kude  and  distant  tribes  agree  in  th« 
Kainbow  as  a  living  monster     M  ^    ,  conception  of  the 
»g  the  battle  of  the  Ten, ,  "t  ^"'''""'  "V"''  <i^«crib. 

the  Rainbow  arose  JlZ^et  TT  f^^^"'"'''  '^"^  ''ow 
Imta,  the  Father  of  Tre!  ami  c  ^™^  '  '°  ^'""'-'°"- 
h's  trunk  was  snapt  i„  tl;  and  h  k"".  *"  "'""'"  """  '"' 
"-  pound.  It  I  not  onl^Tn  m  1  r  ""'"""''"  ^'""^" 
^-.-alawe.struekbeLrdtrr:r:S^^^^ 

^aiie,  ibid.  pn.  an  io  .  n    ..l 
Taylor,  'I^ew  Zealand,'  p.  121. 


i  ■'  '? 


i;  i.ri 


.h^iL  ! 


I 


i^ 


294 


MYTIIOLOGV. 


1/ 


!' 


;  , 


'    iV 


live  Rjiiiibow  is  worked  out.  The  Karens  of  Birma  say  it  is 
a  spirit  or  demon.  **  The  Rainbow  can  devour  men.  .  .  . 
"When  it  devours  a  person,  he  dies  a  sudden  or  violent 
death.  All  persons  that  die  badly,  by  falls,  by  drowning, 
or  by  wild  beasts,  die  because  the  Rainbow  has  devoured 
their  ka-la,  or  spirit.  On  devouring  persons  it  becomes 
thirsty  and  comes  down  to  drink,  when  it  is  seen  in  the  sky 
drinking  water.  Therefore  when  people  see  the  Rainbow, 
they  say,  *  The  Rainbow  has  come  to  drink  water.  Look 
out,  some  one  or  other  will  die  violently  by  an  evil  death.' 
If  children  are  playing,  their  parents  will  say  to  them,  *  The 
Rainbow  hus  come  down  to  drink.  Play  no  more,  lest  some 
accident  should  happen  to  you.'  And  after  the  Rainbow 
has  been  seen,  if  any  fatal  accident  liai)pens  to  anyone,  it  is 
said  the  Rainbow  has  devoured  him."  ^  The  Zulu  ideas 
correspond  in  a  curious  wa}'  Avith  these.  The  Rainbow  lives 
with  a  snake,  that  is,  whore  it  is  there  is  also  a  snake ;  or 
it  is  lilie  a  sheep,  and  dwells  in  a  pool.  When  it  touches 
the  earth,  it  is  drinking  at  a  pool.  Men  are  afraid  to 
wash  in  a  large  pool ;  they  say  there  is  a  Rainbow  in  it,  and 
if  a  man  goes  in,  it  catches  and  eats  him.  The  Rainbow, 
coming  out  of  a  river  or  pool  and  resting  on  the  ground, 
poisons  men  whom  it  meets,  affecting  them  with  eruptions. 
Men  sa)',  "  The  Riiinbow  is  disease.  If  it  rests  on  a  man, 
something  will  happen  to  him."  ^  Lastly  in  Dahome,  Danh 
the  Heavenly  Snake,  which  makes  the  Popo  beads  and 
confers  wealth  on  man,  is  the  Rainbow.^ 

To  the  theory  of  Animism  belong  those  endless  tales 
which  all  nations  tell  of  the  presiding  genii  of  nature,  the 
spirits  of  clilfs,  wells,  waterfalls,  volcanos,  the  elves  and  wood 
nymphs  seen  at  times  by  human  eyes  when  wandering  by 
moonlight  or  assenibled  at  their  fairy  festivals.  Such  beings 
may  personify  the  natural  objects  they  belong  to,  as  when, 
in  a  North  American  tale,  the  guardian  spirit  of  waterfalls 

*  Mason,  'Karens,'  iu  'Journ.  As.  Snc.  Bengal,'  1865,  part  iL  p.  217. 

•  Callaway,  'Zulu  Talcs,'  vol.  L  p.  294. 

'  Burton,  '  Dahome,'  vol.  ii.  p.  148  ;  see  242. 


MYTIfOLOOr. 


«-d  trees  abngin    ff,  ''  '  ^'"^""^^  <'-rent,  benrin.       , 

bodily  C    "Tr^r'°  '^"  °^h™  ea^  L  !    "'■ '"™""' 

-^Wking  example  X'  ?.'"''•  "  "»« 'vhieh  Im"  '  1.""'  ,'  ■ 
K«re„  live.,  in    e  "If  I'"  "'^^'"P-^ent.    This  tir"""' 

"""^^.e  rest  or'zz:L"::n7'  "'^  •"  '"^  Sr-r-^ 

'    ""  "'"'"'«»  "f  Al,  the  searfef  fe:r.l"^  '" 
It  IS  with  this  deen  nl^      •  • 

B,bhotl,eca  Orientalis/  U.  89 


n  " 


',  •  "i 


296 


MYTHOLOGY. 


II 

hH 

• 

Ih 

■f 

R 

r 

1 

li 


I'i    I 


I;   ' 


i 


Among  a  whole  group  of  stones  of  the  pestilence  seen  in 
personal  shape  travelling  to  and  fro  in  the  land,  perhaps 
there  is  none  more  vivid  than  this  Slavonic  one.  There 
sat  a  Russian  under  a  larch-tree,  and  the  sunshine  glared  like 
fire.  He  saw  something  coming  from  afar;  he  looked  again 
— it  was  the  Pest-maiden,  huge  of  stature,  all  shrouded  in 
linen,  striding  towards  him.  He  would  have  fled  in  terror, 
but  the  form  grasped  him  with  her  long  outstretched  hand. 
"  Knowest  thou  the  Pest  ?  "  she  said  ;  "  I  am  she.  Take 
me  on  thy  shoulders  and  carry  me  through  all  Kussia;  miss 
no  village,  no  town,  for  I  must  visit  all.  But  fear  not  for 
thyself,  thou  shalt  be  safe  amid  the  dying."  Clinging  with 
her  long  hands,  she  clambered  on  the  peasant's  back ;  he 
stepped  onward,  saw  the  form  above  him  as  he  went,  but 
felt  no  burden.  First  he  bore  her  to  the  towns ;  they  found 
there  jo3'ous  dance  and  song ;  but  the  form  waved  her  linen 
shroud,  and  joy  and  mirth  were  gone.  As  the  wretched  man 
looked  round,  he  saw  mourning,  he  heard  the  tolling  of  the 
bells,  there  came  funeral  processions,  the  graves  could  not 
hold  the  dead.  He  passed  on,  and  coming  near  each  village 
heard  the  shriek  of  the  dying,  saw  all  faces  white  in  the 
desolate  houses.  But  high  on  the  hill  stands  his  own 
hamlet :  his  wife,  his  little  children  are  there,  and  the  aged 
parents,  and  his  heart  bleeds  as  he  draws  near.  With  strong 
gripe  he  holds  the  maiden  fast,  and  plunges  with  her  be- 
neath the  waves.  He  sank  :  she  rose  again,  but  she  quailed 
before  a  heart  so  fearless,  and  fled  far  away  to  the  forest  and 
the  mountain."  ^ 

Yet,  if  mythology  be  surveyed  in  a  more  comprehensive 
view,  it  is  seen  that  its  animistic  development  falls  within  a 
broader  generalization  still.  The  explanation  of  the  course 
and  change  of  nature,  as  caused  by  life  such  as  the  Hfe  of 
the  thinking  man  who  gazes  on  it,  is  but  a  part  of  a  far 
wider  mental  process.     It  belongs  to  that  great  doctrine  of 


'  Haiiusch,   '  Slav.  Mythus, '  p.  322.     Compare  Torquemada,  '  Monwquia 
Indiana,'  i.  c.  14  (Mexico) ;  Bastian,  '  Psyehologie,'  p.  197. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


297 


Insive 
Ihin  a 
lourse 
Lie  of 
a  far 
Ine  of 

[nP.rquia 


analogy,  from  which  we  have  gained  so  much  of  our  appre- 
hension of  the  world  around  us.  Distrusted  as  it  now  is  by 
severer  science  for  its  misleading  results,  analogy  is  still  to 
us  a  chief  means  of  discovery  and  illustration,  while  in 
earlier  grades  of  education  its  influence  was  all  but  para- 
mount. Analogies  which  are  but  lancy  to  us  were  to  men 
of  past  ages  reality.  They  could  see  the  flame  licking  its 
yet  undevoured  prey  with  tongues  of  fire,  or  the  serpent 
gliding  along  the  waving  sword  from  hilt  to  point ;  they 
could  feel  a  live  creature  gnawing  within  their  bodies  in  the 
pangs  of  hunger ;  they  heard  the  voices  of  the  hill-dwarfs 
answering  in  the  echo,  and  the  chariot  of  the  lieu  >  en-god 
rattling  in  thunder  over  the  solid  firmament.  Men  to  whom 
these  were  living  thoughts  had  no  need  of  the  schoolmaster 
and  his  rules  of  composition,  his  injunctions  to  use  metaphor 
cautiously,  and  to  take  continual  care  to  make  all  similes 
consistent.  The  similes  of  the  old  bards  and  orators  were 
consistent,  because  they  seemed  to  see  and  hear  and  feel 
them :  what  we  call  poetry  was  to  them  real  life,  not  as  to 
the  modern  versemaker  a  masquerade  of  gods  and  heroes, 
shepherds  and  shepherdesses,  stage  heroines  and  philosophic 
savages  in  paint  and  feathers.  It  was  with  a  far  deeper 
consciousness  that  the  circumstance  of  nature  was  worked 
out  in  endless  imaginative  detail  in  ancient  days  and  among 
uncultured  races. 

Upon  the  sky  above  the  hill-countr}'^  of  Orissa,  Pidzu 
Pennu,  the  Rain-god  of  the  Khonds,  rests  as  he  pours  down 
the  showers  through  his  sieve.^  Over  Peru  there  stands  a 
princess  with  a  vase  of  rain,  and  when  her  brother  strikes 
the  pitcher,  men  hear  the  shock  in  thunder  and  see  the  flash 
in  lightning.^  To  the  old  Greeks  the  rainbow  seemed 
stretched  down  bj'  Jove  from  heaven,  a  purple  sign  of  war 
and  tempest,  or  it  was  the  personal  Iris,  messenger  between 
gods  and  men.'     To  the  South  Sea  islander  it  was  the 

'  Macpherson,  '  India,'  p.  367. 

•  Miirkliaii),  '  Quichua  Gr.  and  Die'  p.  9. 

•  Welcker,  'Grioch.  Gotterl.  *  vol,  i.  p.  690. 


>  ^  i  I ' 


Ifi 


heaven-ladder  where  heroes  of  old  climbed  up  and  down  ; 
and  so  to  the  Scandiniivian  it  was  Bifrost,  the  trembling 
bridge,  timbered  of  three  hues  and  stretched  from  sky  to 
earth ;  while  in  German  folk-lore  it  is  the  bridge  where  the 
souls  of  the  just  are  led  b}-  their  guardian  angels  across  to 
paradise.^  As  the  Israelite  called  it  the  bow  of  Jehovah  in 
the  clouds,  it  is  to  the  Hindu  the  bow  of  Rama,^  and  to  the 
Finn  the  bow  of  Tiermes  the  Thunderer,  who  slays  with  it 
the  sorcei'ers  that  hunt  after  men's  lives ;  *  it  is  imagined, 
moreover,  as  a  gold-embroidered  scarf,  a  head-dress  of 
feathers,  St.  Bernard's  crown,  or  the  sickle  of  an  Esthonian 
deity,^  And  yet  through  all  such  endless  varieties  of  mythic 
conception,  there  runs  one  main  principle,  the  evident  sug- 
gestion and  analogy  of  nature.  It  has  been  said  of  the 
savages  of  North  America,  that  "  there  is  always  something 
actual  and  physical  to  ground  an  Indian  fancy  on."  *  The 
saying  goes  too  far,  but  v.ithin  limits  it  is  emphatically  true, 
not  of  North  American  Indians  alone,  but  of  mankind. 

Such  resemblances  as  have  just  been  displayed  thrust 
themselves  directly  on  the  mind,  without  any  necessary  in- 
tervention of  words.  Deep  as  language  lies  in  our  mental 
life,  the  direct  comparison  of  object  with  object,  and  action 
with  action,  lies  yet  deeper.  The  myth-maker's  mind  shows 
forth  even  among  the  deaf-and-dumb,  who  work  out  just 
such  analogies  of  nature  in  their  wordless  thought.  Again 
and  again  they  have  been  found  to  suppose  themselves 
taught  by  their  guardians  to  worship  and  pra}^  to  sun,  moon, 
and  stars,  as  personal  creatures.  Others  have  described 
their  early  thoughts  of  the  heavenly  bodies  as  analogous  to 
things  within  their  reach,  one  fancying  the  moon  made  like 
a  dumpling  and  rolled  over  the  tree-tops  like  a  marble  across 


I     Ki 


I  ! 


'  Ellis,  '  Polyn.  Pes.'  vol  i.  p.  281 ;  Polack,  'New.  Z.'  vol  i.  p.  273. 
»  Grimm,  '  D.  M.' pp   694—6. 

•  Ward,  'Hindoos,'  vol.  i.  p.  140. 

•  Ciistren,  '  Fiiiiiisehe  Mytholofiic,'  pp.  48,  49. 

•  Dnllim(!k  in  Luziirus  and  Stcintliars  ZeiLschrift,  vol.  UL  p.  269. 

•  Schoulcral't,  part  iii.  p.  C20. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


•2:i'j 


iital 
ction 
lows 
just 

selves 
moon, 
cribed 
ous  to 
le  Ul^e 
across 

r3. 


a  table,  and  the  stars  cut  out  with  great  scissors  and  stuck 
against  the  sky,  while  another  supposed  the  moon  a  furnace 
and  the  stars  fire-grates,  which  the  people  above  the  firma- 
ment light  up  as  we  kindle  fires.^  Now  the  mythology  of 
mankind  at  large  is  full  of  conceptions  of  nature  like  these, 
and  to  assume  for  them  no  deeper  original  source  than  meta- 
phorical phrases,  would  be  to  ignore  one  of  the  great  transi- 
tions of  our  intellectual  liistor}'. 

Language,  there  is  no  doubt,  has  had  a  great  share  in  the 
formation  of  myth.  The  mere  fact  of  its  individualizing  in 
words  such  notions  as  winter  and  summer,  cold  and  heat, 
war  and  peace,  vice  and  virtue,  gives  the  myth-maker  the 
means  of  imagining  these  thoughts  as  personal  beings. 
Language  not  only  acts  in  thorough  unison  with  the  imagi- 
nation whose  product  it  expresses,  but  it  goes  on  producing 
of  itself,  and  thus,  by  the  side  of  the  mythic  conceptions  in 
which  language  has  followed  imagination,  we  have  others  in 
which  language  has  led,  and  imagination  has  followed  in  the 
track.  These  two  actions  coincide  too  closely  for  their 
effects  to  be  thoroughly  separated,  but  they  should  be  dis- 
tinguished as  far  as  possible.  For  myself,  I  am  disposed 
to  think  (differing  here  in  some  measure  from  Professor 
Max  Miiller's  view  of  the  subject)  that  the  mythology  of  the 
lower  races  rests  especially  on  a  basis  of  real  and  sensible 
analogy,  and  that  the  great  expansion  of  verbal  metaphor 
into  myth  belongs  to  more  advanced  periods  of  civilization. 
In  a  word,  I  take  material  myth  to  be  the  primary,  and 
verbal  myth  to  be  the  secondary  formation.  But  whether 
this  opinion  be  historically  sound  or  not,  the  difference  in 
nature  between  myth  founded  on  fact  and  myth  founded  on 
word  is  sufiiciently  manifest.  The  want  of  reality  in  verbal 
metaphor  cannot  be  efiectually  hidden  by  the  utmost  stretch 
of  imagination.  In  spite  of  this  essential  weakness,  however, 
the  habit  of  reahzing  everything  that  words  can  describe  is 

'  Sicanl,  '  Th(<orie  des  Signes,  etc'  Paris,  1808,  vol.  ii.  p.  634  ;  *  Personal 
Recollections'  by  Charlotte  Elizabeth,  London,  1841,  p.  182;  Dr.  Orpen,  'The 
Contrast,'  p.  2£.     Compare  Meiners,  vol.  i.  p.  42. 


•M 


nil 


l^i! 


300 


MYTHOLOGY. 


r?Jf  ::ili 


f 


h    I 


one  which  has  grown  and  flourished  in  the  world.  Descrip> 
tive  names  become  personal,  the  notion  of  personalitj' 
stretches  to  take  in  even  the  most  abstract  notions  to  which 
a  name  may  be  applied,  and  realized  name,  epithet,  and 
metaphor  pass  into  interminable  mythic  growths  by  the 
process  which  Max  Miiller  has  so  aptly  characterized  as  '*  a 
disease  of  Lmguage."  It  would  be  difficult  indeed  to  define 
the  exact  thought  lying  at  the  root  of  every  mythic  concep- 
tion, but  in  easy  cases  the  course  of  formation  can  be  quite 
well  followed.  North  American  tribes  have  personified 
Nipinukhe  and  Pij^unukhe,  the  beings  who  bring  the  spring 
(nipin)  and  the  winter  (pipun) ;  Nipinukhe  brings  the  heat 
and  birds  and  verdure,  Pipunulche  ravages  with  his  cold 
winds,  his  ice  and  snow ;  one  comes  as  the  other  goes,  and 
between  them  they  divide  the  world.^  Just  such  personifi- 
cation as  this  furnishes  the  staple  of  endless  nature- 
metaphor  in  our  own  Europenn  poetry.  In  the  springtime 
it  comes  to  be  snid  that  May  has  coiKjuered  Winter,  his  gate 
is  open,  he  has  sent  letters  before  him  to  tell  the  fruit  that 
he  is  coming,  his  tent  is  pitched,  he  brings  the  woods  their 
summer  clothing.  Thus,  when  Night  is  personified,  we  see 
how  it  comes  to  pass  that  Day  is  her  son,  and  how  each  in 
a  heavenl}'  chariot  drives  round  the  world.  To  minds  in 
this  mythologic  stage,  the  Curse  becomes  a  personal  being, 
hovering  in  space  till  it  can  liglit  upon  its  victim;  Time  and 
Nature  arise  as  real  entities ;  Fate  and  Fortune  become 
personal  arbiters  of  our  lives.  But  at  last,  as  the  change 
of  meaning  goes  on,  thoughts  that  once  had  a  more  real 
sense  fade  into  mere  poetic  forms  of  speech.  "We  have  but 
to  compare  the  effect  of  avicient  and  modern  personification 
on  our  own  minds,  to  understand  something  of  what  hits 
happened  in  the  interval.  Milton  may  be  consistent, 
classical,  majestic,  when  he  tells  how  Sin  and  Death  sat 
within  the  gates  of  hell,  and  how  they  built  their  bridge  of 
length  prodigious  across  the  deep  abyss  to  earth.     Yet  such 

'  Le  Jeuue,  in  '  Eel.  des  Jes.  dans  la  Nouvelle  France,'  1634,  p.  13. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


30] 


Hinge 


jt  such 


13. 


descriptions  leave  but  scant  sense  of  meaning  on  modern 
minds,  and  we  are  apt  to  say,  as  we  might  of  some  counter- 
feit bronze  from  Naples,  "  For  a  sham  antique  how  cleverlj- 
it  is  done."  Entering  into  the  mind  of  the  old  Norseniiin, 
we  guess  how  much  more  of  meaning  than  the  cleverest 
modern  imitation  can  carry,  lay  in  his  pictures  of  Hel,  the 
death-goddess,  stern  and  grim  and  livid,  dwelling  in  her 
higli  and  strong-barred  house,  and  keeping  in  her  nine 
worlds  the  souls  of  the  departed  ;  Hunger  is  her  dish, 
Famine  is  her  knife.  Care  is  her  bed,  and  Misery  her 
curtain.  When  such  old  material  descriptions  are  trans- 
ferred to  modern  times,  in  spite  of  all  the  accuracy  of  re- 
production their  spirit  is  quite  changed.  The  story  of  the 
monk  who  displayed  among  his  relics  the  garments  of  St. 
Faith  is  to  us  only  a  jest ;  and  we  call  it  quaint  humour 
when  Charles  Lamb,  falling  old  and  infirm,  once  wrote  to  a 
friend,  "  My  bed-fellows  are  Cough  and  Cramp ;  we  sleep 
three  in  a  bed."  Perhaps  we  need  not  appreciate  the 
drollery  any  the  less  for  seeing  in  it  at  once  a  consequence 
and  a  record  of  a  past  intellectual  life. 

The  distinction  of  grammatical  gender  is  a  process 
intimately  connected  with  the  formation  of  myths.  Gram- 
matical gender  is  of  two  kinds.  What  may  be  called  sexual 
gender  is  familiar  to  all  classically-educated  Englishmen, 
though  their  mother  tongue  has  mostly  lost  its  traces. 
Thus  in  Latin  not  only  are  such  words  as  homo  and  femina 
classed  naturally  as  masculine  and  feminine,  but  such  words 
as  i)cs  and  gladlus  are  made  masculine,  and  biga  and  7iaris 
feminine,  and  the  same  distinction  is  actually  drawn 
between  such  abstractions  as  Ikdios  und  fides.  That  sexless 
objects  and  ideas  should  thus  be  classed  as  male  and  fenude, 
in  spite  of  a  new  gender — the  neuter  or  *'  neither"  gender 
— having  been  defined,  seems  in  part  explained  by  consider- 
ing this  latter  to  have  been  of  later  formation,  and  the 
original  Indo-European  genders  to  have  been  only  masculine 
and  feminine,  as  is  actually  the  case  in  Hebrew.  Though 
the  practice  of  attributing  sex  to  objects  that  have  none  is 


m 


li 


'I'lf 


!(l 


!    :«« 


302 


MYTHOLOGY. 


■r  1 

!'■' 

wfM 

f  t 

]ii '  ■-': 

'ff,  ■  '■( 

if'  ■  i 

!  ;! 

■' 

I'i 

If 

;¥ 
i 

|i 

P 

■ 

1      ■ 

I    i 


!  .   jr  V 


not  easy  to  explain  in  detail,  yet  there  seems  nothinf* 
mysterious  in  its  principles,  to  judge  from  one  at  least  of 
its  main  ideas,  which  is  still  quite  intelligible.  Language 
makes  an  admirably  appropriate  distinction  between  strong 
and  weak,  stern  and  gentle,  rough  and  delicate,  when  it 
contrasts  them  as  male  and  female.  It  is  possible  to  under- 
stand even  such  fancies  as  those  which  Pietro  della  Valle 
describes  among  the  mediaeval  Persians,  distinguishing 
between  male  and  female,  that  is  to  say,  practically  between 
robust  and  tender,  even  in  such  things  as  food  and  cloth, 
air  and  water,  and  prescribing  their  proper  use  accordingly .^ 
And  no  phrase  could  be  more  plain  and  forcible  than  that 
of  the  Dayaks  of  Borneo,  who  say  of  a  heavy  downpour  of 
rain,  '*  ujatn  arai,  'sa  !  " — **  a  he  rain  this  !  "  ^  Difficult  as 
it  may  be  to  decide  how  far  objects  and  thoughts  were 
classed  in  language  as  male  and  female  because  they  were 
personified,  and  how  far  they  were  personified  because  they 
were  classed  as  male  and  female,  it  is  evident  at  any  rate 
that  these  two  processes  fit  together  and  promote  each 
other.* 

Moreover,  in  studying  languages  which  lie  beyond  the 
range  of  common  European  scholarship,  it  is  found  that  the 
theory  of  grammatical  gender  must  be  extended  into  a  wider 
field.  The  Dravidian  languages  of  South  India  make  the 
interesting  distinction  between  a  "  high-caste  or  major 
gender,"  which  includes  rational  beings,  i.  e.,  deities  and 
men,  and  a  **  caste-less  or  minor  gender,"  which  includes 
irrational  objects,  whether  living  animals  or  lifeless  things.* 
The  distinction  between  an  animate  and  an  inanimate 
gender  appears  with  especial  import  in  a  family  of  North 
American  Indian  languages,  the  Algonquin.     Here  not  only 


'  Pietro  della  Valle,  '  Viag;,'!,' letter  xvi. 
'  '  Journ.  Ind.  Archip.' vol.  ii.  p.  xxvii. 

•  See  reiiuirks  on  tlio  tendency  of  sex-denoting  language  to  produce  myth  in 
Africa,  in  W.  H.  Bleek,  'Reynard  the  Fox  in  S.  Afr.' p.  xx.  ;  'Origin  of 
Lang.'  p.  xxiii. 

*  Caldwell,  'Comp.  Gr.  of  Dravidian  Langs.'  p.  172. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


.S()3 


les 

4 


do  all  animals  belong  to  the  animate  gender,  but  also  the 
sun,  moon,  and  stars,  thunder  and  lightning,  as  being 
personified  creatures.  The  animate  gender,  moreover, 
includes  not  only  trees  and  fruits,  but  certain  exceptional 
lifeless  objects  which  appear  to  owe  this  distinction  to  their 
special  sanctity  or  power ;  such  are  the  stone  which  serves 
as  the  altar  of  sacrifice  to  the  raanitus,  the  bow,  the  eagle's 
feather,  the  kettle,  tobacco-pipe,  drum,  and  wampum. 
Where  the  whole  animal  is  animate,  parts  of  its  body 
considered  separately  may  be  inanimate — hand  or  foot,  beak 
or  wing.  Yet  even  here,  for  special  reasons,  special  objects 
are  treated  as  of  animate  gender;  such  are  the  eagle's 
talons,  the  bear's  claws,  the  beaver's  castor,  the  man's  nails, 
and  other  objects  for  which  there  is  claimed  a  peculiar  or 
mystic  power.^  If  to  any  one  it  seems  surprising  that 
savage  thought  should  be  steeped  through  and  through  in 
mythology,  let  him  consider  the  meaning  that  is  involved  in 
a  grammar  of  nature  like  this.  Such  a  language  is  the  very 
reflexion  of  a  mythic  world. 

There  is  yet  another  way  in  which  language  and  mytho- 
logy can  act  and  re-act  on  one  another.  Even  we,  with 
our  blunted  mythologic  sense,  cannot  give  an  individual 
name  to  a  lifeless  object,  such  as  a  boat  or  a  weapon,  with- 
out in  the  very  act  imagining  for  it  something  of  a  personal 
nature.  Among  nations  whose  mythic  conceptions  have 
remained  in  full  vigour,  this  action  may  be  yet  more  vivid. 
Perhaps  very  low  savages  mny  not  be  apt  to  name  their 
implements  or  their  canoes  as  though  the}^  were  live  people, 
but  races  a  few  stages  above  them  show  the  habit  in  perfec- 
tion. Among  the  Zulus  we  hear  of  names  for  clubs, 
Igumgehle  or  Glutton,  U-nothlola-mazibuko  or  He-who- 
watches-the-fords  ;  among  names  for  assagais  are  Imbubuzi 
or  Groan-causer,  U-silo-si-lambile  or  Hungry  Leopard,  and 
the  weapon  being  also  used  as  an  implement,  a  certain 


I 


^3% 


\M 


'{  '' 


H; 


'  Schoolcraft,  'Indian  Tribes,'  part  ii.  p.  366.  For  other  cases  see  especially 
Pott  in  Ersch  and  Gruber'a  'Ally.  Encjclop.'art.  '  Geschlecht ;'  alsoD.  Forbes, 
•  Persian  Gr.'  p.  26  ;  Latham, '  Deser.  Eth.'  vol.  ii.  p.  60. 


M' 


f'i 


•,^] 


!, 


i^m ' 


304 


MYTHOLOGY. 


assagai  bears  the  peaceful  name  of  U-simbela-banta-baini, 
He-digs-up-for-my-children.^  A  similar  custom  prevailed 
among  the  New  Zeahinders.  The  traditions  of  their 
ancestral  migrations  tell  how  Ngahue  made  from  his  jasper 
stone  those  two  sharp  axes  whose  names  were  Tutaui'u  and 
Hiiuhau-te-rangi ;  how  with  these  axes  were  shaped  the 
canoes  Arawa  and  Tainui ;  how  the  two  stone  anchors  ot 
Te  Arawa  were  called  Toka-parore  or  Wrystone,  and 
Tu-te-rangi-haruru  or  Like -to -the -roaring -sky.  These 
legends  do  not  break  off  in  a  remote  past,  but  carry  on  a 
chronicle  which  reaches  into  modern  times.  It  is  only 
lately,  the  Maoris  say,  that  the  ftimous  axe  Tutauru  was 
lost,  and  as  for  the  ear-ornament  named  Kaukau-matua, 
which  was  made  from  a  chip  of  the  same  stone,  they  declare 
that  it  was  not  lost  till  1846,  when  its  owner,  Te  Heuheu, 
perished  in  a  landslip.^  Up  from  this  savage  level  the  same 
childlike  habit  of  giving  personal  names  to  lifeless  objects 
may  be  traced,  as  we  read  of  Thor's  hammer,  Miohiir, 
whom  the  giants  know  as  he  comes  flying  through  the  air, 
or  of  Arthur's  brand,  Excalibur,  caught  by  the  arm  clothed 
in  white  samite  when  Sir  Bedivere  flung  him  back  into  the 
lake,  or  of  the  Cid's  mighty  sword  Tizona,  the  Firebrand, 
whom  he  vowed  to  bmy  in  his  own  breast  were  she  over- 
come through  cowardice  of  his. 

The  teachings  of  a  childlike  primeval  philosophy  ascrib- 
ing personal  life  to  nature  at  large,  and  the  earl}'  tyranny 
of  speech  over  the  human  mind,  have  thus  been  two  great 
and,  perhaps,  greatest  agents  in  mythologic  development. 
Other  causes,  too,  have  been  at  work,  which  will  be  noticed 
in  connexion  with  special  legendary  groups,  and  a  full  list, 
could  it  be  drawn  up,  might  include  as  contributories  many 
other  intellectual  actions.  It  must  be  thoroughly  under- 
stood, however,  that  such  investigation  of  the  processes  of 
myth-formation  demands  a  Hvely  sense  of  the  state  of  men's 


if: 


;   1 

■  •  1 

4 

i 

*  Callavay,  '  Relig.  of  Amazulu,' p.  166. 

2  Grey, '  Polyn.  Myth.'  pp.  132,  etc., 211 ;  Shorthand,  'Traditions  of  N.  Z. 
p.  15. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


305 


't, 


lof 


minds  in  the  mythologic  period.  When  the  Russians  in 
Siberia  listened  to  the  talk  of  the  rude  Kirgis,  tliey  stood 
amazed  at  the  barbarians'  ceaseless  flow  of  poetic  improvisa- 
tion, and  exclaimed,  "  Whatever  these  people  see  gives 
birth  to  fancies ! "  Just  so  the  civilized  Eurooean  may 
contrast  his  own  stiff  orderly  prosaic  thought  with  the  wild 
shifting  poetry  and  legend  of  the  old  myth-maker,  and  may 
say  of  him  that  everything  he  saw  gave  birth  to  fancy. 
Wanting  the  power  of  transporting  himself  into  this  imagi- 
native atmosphere,  the  student  occupied  with  the  analysis 
of  the  mythic  world  may  fail  so  pitiably  in  conceiving  its 
depth  and  intensity  of  meaning,  as  to  convert  it  into  stupid 
fiction.  Those  can  see  more  justly  wlio  have  the  poet's  gift 
of  throwing  their  minds  back  into  the  world's  older  life,  like 
the  actor  who  for  a  moment  can  forget  himself  and  become 
what  he  pretends  to  be.  Wordsworth,  that  "  modern 
ancient,"  as  Max  Muller  has  so  well  called  him,  could  write 
of  Storm  and  Winter,  or  of  the  naked  Sun  climbing  the 
sky,  as  though  he  were  some  Vedic  poet  at  the  head-spring 
of  the  Aryan  race,  "  seeing  "  with  his  mind's  eye  a  mythic 
hymn  to  Agni  or  Vavuna.  Fully  to  understand  an  old-world 
myth  needs  not  evidence  and  argument  alone,  but  deep 
poetic  feeling. 

Yet  such  of  us  as  share  but  very  little  in  this  rare  gift, 
may  make  shift  to  let  evidence  in  some  measure  stand  in  its 
stead.  In  the  poetic  stage  of  thought  we  may  see  that 
ideal  conceptions  once  shaped  in  the  mind  must  have 
assumed  some  such  reality  to  grown-up  men  and  women  as 
the}'  still  do  to  children.  I  have  never  forgotten  the  vivid- 
ness with  which,  as  a  child,  I  fancied  I  might  look  through 
a  great  telescope,  and  see  the  constellations  stand  round  the 
sky,  red,  green,  and  yellow,  as  I  had  just  been  shown  them 
on  the  celestial  globe.  The  intensity  of  mythic  fancy  may 
be  brought  even  more  nearly  home  to  our  minds  by  com- 
paring it  with  the  morbid  subjectivity  of  illness.  Among 
the  lower  races,  and  high  above  their  level,  morbid  ecstasy 
brought  on  by  meditation,  fasting,  narcotics,  excitement,  or 

VOL.  L  z 


i'-r.: 


30G 


MYTHOLOGY. 


!i 


I    :' 


mv 


disease,  is  a  state  common  and  held  in  honour  nmong  the 
very  classes  specially  concerned  with  mythic  idealism,  and 
under  its  influence  the  barriers  between  sensation  and 
imagination  break  utterly  away.  A  North  American  Indian 
prophetess  once  related  the  story  of  her  first  vision  :  At  her 
solitary  fast  at  womanhood  she  fell  into  an  ecstasy,  and  at 
the  call  of  the  spirits  she  went  up  to  heaven  by.  the  path 
that  leads  to  the  opening  of  the  sky ;  there  she  heard  a 
voice,  and,  standing  still,  saw  the  figure  of  a  man  standing 
near  the  path,  whose  head  was  surrounded  by  a  brilliant 
halo,  and  his  breast  was  covered  with  squares ;  he  said, 
"  Look  at  me,  niy  name  is  Oshauwauegeegliick,  the  Bright 
Blue  Sky  ! "  Recording  her  experience  afterwards  in  the 
rude  picture-writing  of  her  race,  she  painted  this  glorious 
spirit  with  the  hieroglyphic  horns  of  power  and  the  brilliant 
halo  round  his  head.^  We  know  enough  of  the  Indian 
pictographs,  to  guess  how  a  fancy  with  these  familiar  details 
of  the  picture-language  came  into  the  poor  excited  crea- 
ture's mind ;  but  how  far  is  our  cold  analysis  from  her 
utter  belief  that  in  vision  she  had  really  seen  this  bright 
being,  this  Red  Indian  Zeus.  Far  from  being  an  isolated 
case,  this  is  scarcely  more  than  a  fair  example  of  the  rule 
that  any  idea  shaped  and  made  current  by  mythic  fancy, 
may  at  once  acquire  all  the  definiteness  of  fact.  Even  if  to 
the  first  shaper  it  be  no  more  than  lively  imtigination,  yet, 
when  it  comes  to  be  embodied  in  words  and  to  pass  from 
house  to  house,  those  who  hear  it  become  capable  of  the 
most  intense  belief  that  it  may  be  seen  in  material  shape, 
that  it  has  been  seen,  that  they  themselves  have  seen  it. 
The  South  African  who  believes  in  a  god  with  a  crooked  leg 
sees  him  with  a  crooked  leg  in  dreams  and  visions.^  In  the 
time  of  Tacitus  it  was  said,  with  a  more  poetic  imagination, 
that  in  the  far  north  of  Scandinavia  men  might  see  the  very 
forms  of  the  gods  and  the  rays  streaming  from  their  heads.' 

'  Schoolcraft, '  Indian  Tribes,'  part  L  p.  891  and  pi.  66. 
»  Livingstone,  'S.  Afr.'  p.  124. 
'  Tac.  Germania,  45. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


307 


! 


In  the  6th  century  the  famed  Nile-god  might  still  be  seen, 
in  gigantic  human  form,  rising  waist-high  from  the  waters 
of  his  river.^  Want  of  originality  indeed  seems  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  features  in  the  visions  of  mystics.  The 
stiff  Madonnas  with  their  crowns  and  petticoats  still 
transfer  themselves  from  the  pictures  on  cottage  walls  to 
appear  in  spiritual  personality  to  peasant  visionaries,  as  the 
saints  who  stood  in  vision  before  ecstatic  monks  of  old  were 
to  be  known  by  their  conventional  pictorial  attributes. 
When  the  devil  with  horns,  hoofs,  and  tail  had  once  become 
a  fixed  image  in  the  popular  mind,  of  course  men  saw  him 
in  this  conventional  shape.  So  real  had  St.  Anthony's 
satyr-demon  become  to  men's  opinion,  that  there  is  a  grave 
13th  century  account  of  the  mummy  of  such  a  devil  being 
exhibited  at  Alexandria ;  and  it  is  not  fifteen  years  back 
from  the  present  time  that  there  was  a  story  current  at 
Teignmouth  of  a  devil  walking  up  the  walls  of  the  houses, 
and  leaving  his  fiendish  backward  footprints  in  the  snow. 
Nor  is  it  vision  alone  that  is  concerned  with  the  delusive 
realization  of  the  ideal ;  there  is,  as  it  were,  a  conspiracy  of 
all  the  senses  to  give  it  proof.  To  take  a  striking  instance  : 
there  is  an  irritating  herpetic  disease  which  gradually 
encircles  the  body  as  with  a  girdle,  whence  its  English  name 
of  the  shingles  (Latin,  ciufjidum).  By  an  imagination  not 
difficult  to  understand,  this  disease  is  attributed  to  a  sort  of 
coiling  snake  ;  and  I  remember  a  case  in  Cornwall  where  a 
girl's  family  waited  in  great  fear  to  see  if  the  creature 
would  stretch  all  round  her,  the  belief  being  that  if  the 
snake's  head  and  tail  met,  the  patient  would  die.  But  a  yet 
fuller  meaning  of  this  fantastic  notion  is  brought  out  in  an 
account  by  Dr.  Bastian  of  a  physician  who  suffered  in  a 
painful  disease,  as  though  a  snake  were  twined  round  him, 
and  in  whose  mind  this  idea  reached  such  reality  that  in 
moments  of  eKcessive  i)ain  he  could  see  the  snake  and  touch 
its  rough  scales  with  his  hand. 

The  relation  of  morbid  imagination  to  myth  is  peculiarly 


K, 


1  Maury,  '  Magie,  etc.'  p.  175. 


X  2 


308 


MYTHOLOGY. 


(     I 


well  instanced  in  the  history  of  a  widespread  belief,  extend- 
ing through  savage,  barbaric,  classic,  oriental,  and  niediiuval 
life,  and  surviving  to  this  day  in  European  superstition. 
This  belief,  which  may  be  conveniently  called  the  Doctrine  of 
Werewolves,  is  that  certain  men,  by  natural  gift  or  magic 
art,  can  turn  for  a  time  into  ravening  wild  beasts.  The 
origin  of  this  idea  is  by  no  means  sufficiently  explained. 
What  we  are  especially  concerned  with  is  the  fact  of  its  pre- 
valence in  the  world.  It  may  be  noticed  that  such  a  notion 
is  quite  consistent  with  the  animistic  theor}'  that  a  man's 
soul  may  go  out  of  his  body  and  enter  that  of  a  beast  or 
bird,  and  also  with  the  opinion  that  men  may  be  transformed 
into  animals  ;  both  these  ideas  having  an  important  place  in 
the  belief  of  mankind,  from  savagery  onward.  The  doctrine 
of  werewolves  is  substantially  that  of  a  temporary  metem- 
psychosis or  metamorphosis.  Now  it  really  occurs  that,  ir. 
various  forms  of  mental  disease,  patients  prowl  shyh^,  long  tc 
bite  and  destroy  mankiiul,  and  even  fancy  themselves  trans- 
formed into  wild  beasts.  Belief  in  the  possil)ility  of  such 
transformation  may  have  been  the  very  suggesting  cause 
which  led  the  patient  to  imagine  it  taking  i)lace  in  his  own 
person.  But  at  any  rate  such  insane  delusions  do  occur, 
and  physicians  apply  to  them  the  mythologic  term  of  lycan- 
thropy.  The  belief  in  men  being  werewolves,  man-tigers, 
and  the  like,  may  thus  have  the  strong  support  of  the  very 
witnesses  who  believe  themselves  to  be  such  creatures. 
Moreover,  professional  sorcerers  have  taken  up  the  idea,  as 
they  do  any  morbid  delusion,  and  pretend  to  turn  themselves 
and  others  into  beasts  by  magic  art.  Through  the  mass  of 
ethnographic  details  relating  to  this  subject,  there  is  manifest 
a  remarkable  uniformity  of  principle. 

Among  the  non- Aryan  indigenes  of  India,  the  tribes  of  the 
Garo  Hills  describe  as  "  transformation  into  a  tiger"  a  kind 
of  temporary  madness,  apparently  of  the  nature  of  delirium 
tremens,  in  which  the  patient  walks  like  a  tiger,  shunning 
society.*  The  Khonds  of  Orissa  say  that  some  among  them 
'  Eliot  in  'As.  Res.'  vol.  iii.  p.  32. 


MYTHOLOaT. 


non 


god   bct'oiiif 


have  the  art  of  "  inleepa,"  and  by  the  aid  oi  a 
**  mleepa  "  tigers  for  the  purpose  of  killing  enemies,  one  of 
the  man's  four  souls  going  out  to  animate  the  bestial  form. 
Natural  tigers,  say  the  Khonds.  kill  game  to  benefit  men, 
who  find  it  half  devoured  and  luire  it,  whereas  man-killing 
tigers  are  cither  incarnations  of  the  wrathful  Earth-goddess, 
or  they  are  transformed  men.^  Thus  the  notion  of  man- 
tigers  serves,  as  similar  notions  do  elsewhere,  to  account  for 
the  fact  that  certain  individual  wild  beasts  show  a  peculiar 
hostility  to  man.  Among  the  Ho  of  Singbhoom  it  is  related, 
as  an  example  of  similar  belief,  that  a  man  named  ^lora  saw 
his  wife  killed  by  a  tiger,  and  followed  the  beast  till  it  led  him 
to  the  house  of  a  man  named  Poosa.  Telling  Poosa's  rela- 
tives of  what  had  occurred,  they  replied  tliat  they  were  aware 
that  he  had  the  power  of  becominrf  a  tiger,  and  accordini^ly 
they  brought  him  out  bound,  and  Mora  deliberately  killed 
him.  Inquisition  being  made  by  the  authorities,  the  family 
deposed,  in  explanation  of  their  belief,  that  Poosa  had  one 
night  devoured  an  entire  goat,  roaring  like  a  tiger  whilst 
e.iting  it,  and  that  on  another  occasion  he  told  his  friends  he 
had  a  longing  to  eat  a  particular  bullock,  and  that  very  night 
that  very  bullock  was  killed  and  devoured  by  a  tiger.'' 
South-eastern  Asia  is  not  less  familiar  with  the  idea  of 
sorcerers  turning  into  man-tigers  and  wandering  after  prey  ; 
thus  the  Jakuns  of  the  Malay  Peninsula  believe  that  when  a 
man  becomes  a  tiger  to  revenge  himself  on  his  enemies,  the 
transformation  happens  just  before  he  springs,  and  has  been 
seen  to  take  place.^ 

How  vividly  the  imagination  oi  an  excited  tribe,  once 
inoculated  with  a  belief  like  this,  can  realize  it  into  an  event, 
is  graphicall}'^  told  by  Dobrizhoifer  among  the  Abipones  of 
South  America.  When  a  sorcerer,  to  get  the  better  of  an 
enemy,  threatens  to  change  himself  into  a  tiger  and  tear  his 

>  Macpherson,  '  India,'  pp.  92,  99,  108. 

»  Dalton,  'Kols  of  Chota-Nagpore '  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  vi.  p.  82. 
•  J.  Cameron,    'Malayan  India,'  p.   393;  Bastian,  '0'«tl.   Asien,' voL  L 
p.  119  ;  vol.  iii.  pp.  261,  273  ;  'As.  Res.'  vol  vi.  p.  173. 


t 


■I 


I    '! 


■  i 


310 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I,!  ; 


jSi 


M     I. 


ri  I 


I  JJm! 


tribesmen  to  pieces,  no  sooner  does  he  begin  to  roar,  than 
all  the  neighbours  fly  to  a  distance  ;  but  still  they  hear  the 
feigned  sounds.     "  Alas  !  "  the}'  cry,   "  his  whole  body  is 
beginning  to  be   covered  with  tiger-spots !  "     "  Look,  his 
nails  are  growing  !  "  the  fear-struck  women  exclaim,  although 
the}'  cannot  see  the  rogue,  who  is  concealed  within  his  tent, 
but  distracted  fear  presents  things  to  their  eyes  which  have 
no  real  existence.     "  You  daily  kill  tigers  in  the  plain  with- 
out dread,"  said  the  missionary ;   "  why  then  should  you 
weakly  fenr  a  false  imaginary  tiger  in  the  town  ?  "     "  You 
fathers  don't  understand  these  matters,"  they  reply  with  a 
smile.    "  We  never  fear,  but  kill  tigers  in  the  plain,  because 
we  can  see  them.     Artificial  tigers  we  do  fear,  because  they 
can  neither  bo  seen  nor  killed  b}'  us."  ^     The  sorcerers  who 
induced  assemblies  of  credulous  savages  to  believe  in  this 
monstrous  imposture,  were  also  the  professional  spiritualistic 
mediums  of  the  tribes,  whose  business  it  was  to  hold  inter- 
course with  the  spirits  of  the  dead,  causing  them  to  appear 
visibly,  or  carrying  on  audible  dialogues  with  them  behind  a 
curtain.     Africa  is  especially  rich  in  myths  of  man-lions, 
man-leopards,    man-hyrenas.     In  the  Kanuri   language   of 
Bornu,    there    is    grammatically   formed    from    the   word 
"bultu,"  a  hyjena,  the  verb  "  bultungin,"  meaning  "  I  trans- 
form myself  into  a  hyaena ;  "  and  the  natives  maintain  that 
there  is  a  town  called  Kabutiloa,  where  every  man  possesses 
this  faculty.^    The  tribe  of  Budas  in  Abyssinia,  iron-wo"kers 
and  potters,  are  believed  to  combine  with  these  civilized 
avocations  the  gift  of  the  evil  eye  and  the  power  of  turning 
into  hyjBnas,  wherefore  they  are  excluded  from  society  and 
the  Christian  sacrament.    In  the  *  Life  of  Nathaniel  Pearce,' 
the  testimony  of  one  Mr.  Coffin  is  printed.     A  young  Buda, 
his  servant,  came  for  leave  of  absence,  which  was  granted  ; 
but  scarcely  was  Mr.  Coffin's  head  turned  to  his  other 

'  Dobrizliotrer,  '  Abipoiies,'  vol.  ii.  p.  77.  See  J.  G.  Miiller,  *Amer. 
Uirclig.' p  63;  Martins,  '  Kthii.  Amer.' vol.  i.  p.  652  ;  Oviedo,  'Niraragun, 
p.  '229  ;  IMc'diiiliitii,  '  Nuevu  Keyno  de  Graiiudii,'  part  i.  lib.  L  a  3. 

*  Koelle,  'Air.  Lit.  and  Kunuri  Vocab.'  p.  275. 


r 


MYTHOLOGY. 


311 


at 


nd 


la, 


ler 


servants,  when  some  of  them  called  out,  pointing  in  the 
direction  the  Buda  had  taken,  "  Look,  look,  he  is  turning 
himself  into  a  hyrena."  Mr.  Coffin  instantly  looked  round, 
the  young  man  had  vanished,  and  a  large  hysena  was 
running  off  at  about  a  hundred  panes'  distance,  in  full  light 
on  the  open  plain,  without  tree  or  bush  to  intercept  the 
view.  The  Buda  came  back  next  morning,  and  as  usual 
rather  affected  to  countenance  than  deny  the  prodigy.  Coifin 
says,  moreover,  that  the  Budas  wear  a  peculiar  gold  ear- 
ring, and  this  he  has  frequently  seen  in  the  ears  of  hyteuas 
shot  in  traps,  or  speared  b}'  himself  and  others ;  the  Budas 
are  dreaded  for  their  magical  arts,  and  the  editor  of  the  book 
suggests  that  they  put  ear-rings  in  hytena's  ears  to  encourage 
a  profitable  superstition.^  Mr.  Mansfield  Parkyns'  more 
recent  account  shows  how  thoroughly  tliis  belief  is  part  and 
parcel  of  Abyssinian  spiritualism.  Hysterics,  letliargy, 
morbid  insensibility  to  pain,  and  the  "  demoniacal  posses- 
sion," in  which  the  patient  speaks  in  the  name  and  language 
of  an  intruding  spirit,  are  all  ascribed  to  the  spiritual  agonc}' 
of  the  Budas.  Among  the  cases  described  by  Mr.  Parkyns 
was  that  of  a  servant-woman  of  his,  whose  illness  was  set 
down  to  the  influence  of  one  of  these  blacks inith-hyicuas, 
who  wanted  to  get  her  out  into  the  forest  and  devour  her. 
One  night,  a  hytena  having  been  heard  howling  and  laughing 
near  the  village,  the  woman  was  bound  hand  and  foot  and 
closely  guarded  in  the  hut,  when  suddenly,  the  hyiiona  calling 
close  by,  her  master,  to  his  astonishment,  saw  her  rise 
"  without  her  bonds  "  like  a  Davenport  IVrother,  and  try  to 
escape.^  In  Ashango-land,  M.  Du  Chaillu  tells  the  follow- 
ing suggestive  story.  He  was  informed  that  a  leopard  had 
killed  two  men,  and  many  palavers  were  held  to  settle  the 
aifair  ;  but  this  was  no  ordinary  leopard,  but  a  transformed 
man.     Two  of  Akondogo's  men  had  disappeared,  and  only 


I 


■,t. ' 


'I  . 


ler. 


'  'Life  and  Adventures  of  Nathaniel  Pearee'  (1810-9),  ed.  by  J.  J.  Halls, 
London,  1831,  vol.  i  p.  286;  also  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  vi.  p,  288  ;  \Vait8» 
vol.  ii.  p.  504. 

'^  Parkyns,  'Lifo  in  Abyssinia'  (1853),  vol.  ii.  p.  146. 


'    !l 


!•:; 


their  blood  was  found,  so  a  great  doctor  was  sent  for,  who 
said  it  was  Akondogo's  own  nephew  and  heir  Akosho.  The 
lad  was  sent  for,  and  when  asked  by  the  chief,  answered 
that  it  was  truly  he  who  had  committed  the  murders,  that  he 
could  not  help  it,  for  he  had  turned  into  a  leopard,  and  his 
heart  longed  for  blood,  and  after  each  deed  he  had  turned 
into  a  man  again.  Akondogo  loved  the  boy  so  much  that  he 
would  not  belie v'e  his  confession,  till  Akosho  took  him  to  a 
place  in  the  forest,  where  lay  the  mangled  bodies  of  the  two 
men,  whom  he  had  really  murdered  under  the  influence  of 
this  morbid  imagination.  He  was  slowly  burnt  to  death,  all 
the  people  standing  by.^ 

Brief  mention  is  enough  for  the  comparatively  well- 
known  European  representatives  of  these  beliefs.  What 
with  the  mere  continuance  of  old  tradition,  what  with  the 
tricks  of  magicians,  and  what  with  cases  of  patients  under 
delusion  believing  themselves  to  have  suffered  transforma- 
tion, of  which  a  number  are  on  record,  the  European  series 
of  details  from  ancient  to  modern  ages  is  very  complete. 
Virgil  in  the  Bucolics  shows  the  popular  opinion  of  his 
time  that  the  arts  of  the  werewolf,  the  necromancer  or 
"  medium,"  and  the  witch,  were  different  branches  of  one 
craft,  where  he  tells  of  Moeris  as  turning  into. a  wolf  by  the 
use  of  poisonous  herbs,  as  calling  up  souls  from  the  tombs, 
and  as  bewitching  away  crops  : — 

•'  Has  herbas,  atque  hsec  Ponto  mihi  lecta  vonena 
Ipse  dedit  Moeris  ;  nascuntur  pluiima  Ponto. 
His  ogo  Bsepe  lupum  fieri,  et  se  condove  sylvis 
Ma>rin,  ssepe  animas  imis  excire  sepulcris, 
Atque  eatas  alio  vidi  traducere  messes."  ' 

Of  the  classic  accounts,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  is 
Petronius  Arbiter's  story  of  the  transformation  of  a  "  versi- 
pellis  "  or  **  turnskin ;  "  this  contains  the  episode  of  the 

•  Du  Chaillo,  *  Ashango-land,*  p.  62.  For  other  African  details,  see  Waitz, 
vol.  ii.  p.  343  ;  J.  L.  Wilson,  '  W.  Afr.'  pp.  222,  365,  398  ;  Burton,  '  E.  Afr.* 
p.  57  ;  Livingstone,  'S.  Afr.'  pp.  616,  642  ;  Magyar,  *S.  Afr.'  p.  130. 

'  Virg.  Bucol.  eel.  viii.  95. 


t 

■■'i 

% 


MYTHOLOGY. 


313 


Ible  is 
Iversi- 
)f  the 

iWaitz, 
Ie.  Afr.* 


wolf  being  wounded  and  the  man  who  wore  its  shape  found 
with  a  similar  wound,  an  idea  not  sufficiently  proved  to 
belong  originally  to  the  lower  races,  but  which  becomes  a 
familiar  feature  in  European  stories  of  werewolves  and 
witches.  In  Augustine's  time  magicians  were  persuading 
their  dupes  that  by  means  of  herbs  they  could  turn  tliem  to 
wolves,  and  the  use  of  salve  for  this  purpose  is  mentioned 
at  a  comparatively  modern  date.  Old  Scandinavian  sagas 
have  their  werewolf  warriors,  and  "  shape-changers"  (hara- 
rammr)  raging  in  fits  of  furious  madness.  The  Danes  still 
know  a  man  who  is  a  werewolf  by  his  eyebrows  meeting, 
and  thus  resembling  a  butterfly,  the  fauiiliar  type  of  the 
soul,  ready  to  flj'  off  and  enter  some  other  body.  In  the 
last  year  of  the  Swedish  war  with  Russia,  the  people  of 
Kalmar  said  the  wolves  which  overran  the  land  were  trans- 
formed Swedish  prisoners.  From  Herodotus'  legend  of  the 
Neuri  who  turned  every  year  for  a  few  days  to  wolves,  we 
follow  the  idea  on  Slavonic  ground  to  where  Livonian 
sorcerers  bathe  yearly  in  a  river  and  turn  for  twelve  days  to 
wolves ;  and  widespread  Slavonic  superstition  still  declares 
that  the  wolves  that  sometimes  in  bitter  winters  dare  to 
attack  men,  are  themselves  "  wilkolak,"  men  bewitched  into 
wolf's  shape.  The  modern  Greeks,  instead  of  the  classic 
XvK&vOpuiTros,  adopt  the  Slavonic  term  l3pvKo\aiia<i  (Bulga- 
rian "  vrkolak  ")  ;  it  is  a  man  who  falls  into  a  cataleptic 
state,  while  his  soul  enters  a  wolf  and  goes  ravening  for 
blood.  Modern  Germany,  especially  in  the  north,  still 
keeps  up  the  stories  of  wolf-girdles,  and  in  December  you 
must  not  "  talk  of  the  wolf"  by  name,  lest  the  werewolves 
tear  you.  Our  English  word  "werewolf,"  that  is  "man- 
wolf*  (the  "verevulf"  of  Cnut's  Laws),  still  reminds  us  of 
the  old  belief  in  our  own  country,  and  if  it  has  had  for 
centuries  but  little  place  in  English  folklore,  this  has  been 
not  so  much  for  lack  of  superstition,  as  of  wolves.  To 
instance  the  survival  of  the  idea,  transferred  to  another 
animal,  in  the  more  modern  witch-persecution,  the  following 
Scotch  story  ma}"^  serve.     Certain  witches  at  Thurso  for  a 


I 


■,i^i'' 


-'i!/ 


.1 11 


I: 


; 


i! 


314 


MYTHOLOGY. 


f 


long  time  tormented  an  honest  fellow  under  the  usual  form 
of  cats,  till  one  night  he  put  them  to  flight  with  his  broad- 
sword, and  cut  off  the  leg  of  one  less  nimble  than  the  rest ; 
taking  it  up,  to  his  amazement  he  found  it  to  be  a  woman's 
leg,  and  next  morning  he  discovered  the  old  hag  its  owner 
with  but  one  leg  left.  In  France  the  creature  has  what  is 
historically  the  same  name  as  our  "werewolf;"  viz.  in 
early  forms  '*  gerulphus,"  '*  garoul, '  and  now  pleonastically 
"  loup-garou."  The  parliament  of  Franche-Comte  made  a 
law  in  1573  to  expel  the  werewolves ;  in  1598  the  werewolf 
of  Angers  gave  evidence  of  his  hands  and  feet  turning  to 
wolf's  claws;  in  1003,  in  the  case  of  Jean  Grenier,  the 
judge  declared  lycanthropy  to  be  an  insane  delusion,  not  a 
crime.  In  1658,  a  French  satirical  description  of  a  magi- 
cian could  still  give  the  following  perfect  account  of  the 
witch-werewolf:  **  I  teach  the  witches  to  take  the  form  of 
wolves  and  eat  children,  and  when  anyone  has  cut  off  one  of 
their  legs  (which  proves  to  be  a  man's  arm)  I  forsake  them 
when  they  are  discovered,  and  leave  them  in  the  power  of 
justice."  Even  in  our  own  day  the  idea  has  by  no  means 
died  out  of  the  French  peasant's  mind.  Nov  ten  years  ago 
in  France,  Mr.  Baring-Gould  found  it  impossible  to  get  a 
guide  after  dark  across  a  wild  place  haunted  by  a  loup- 
garou,  an  incident  which  led  him  afterwards  to  write  his 
"  Book  of  Werewolves,"  a  monograph  of  this  remarkable 
combination  of  myth  and  madness.^ 

If  we  judged  the  myths  of  early  ages  by  the  unaided 
power  of  our  modern  fancy,  we  might  be  left  unable  to 
account  for  their  immense  effect  on  the  life  and  belief  of 
mankind.     But  by  the  study  of  such  evidence  as  this,  it 


If  i 


*  For  collections  of  European  evidence,  see  W.  Hertz,' Der  Werwolf ; '  Piariiig- 
Gould,  '  Hook  of  Werewolves ;  '  Griuim,  '  D.  M.'  p.  1047;  Daseut,  '  Norse 
Tales,'  Introd.  p.  cxix.  ;  Ikstian,  '  Mensch.'  vol.  ii.  pp.  32,  566;  Brand, 
'Pop.  Ant.'  vol.  i.  p.  312,  vol.  iii.  p.  32  ;  Lecky, '  Hist  of  Rationalism,'  vol. 
i  ]).  82.  Particular  details  in  Petron.  Arbiter,  Sutir.  Ixii.  ;  Virgil.  Eidog. 
viii.  5)7  ;  Plin.  viii.  34  ;  Herodot.  iv.  106  ;  Mela  ii.  1  ;  Augustin.  De  Civ. 
l)ei,xviii.  17;  Hanusch,  'Slaw.  Myth.'  pp.  286,  320;  "Wiittko,  'Deutsclia 
\'(ilk8abi'rglaul)o,'  p.  118. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


315 


becomes  possible  to  realize  a  usual  state  of  the  imagination 
among  ancient  and  savage  peoples,  intermediate  between 
the  conditions  of  a  healthy  prosaic  modern  citizen  and  of  a 
raving  fanatic  or  a  patient  in  a  fever-ward.  A  poet  of  our 
own  day  has  still  much  in  common  with  the  minds  of 
uncultured  tribes  in  the  mythologic  stage  of  thought.  The 
rude  man's  imaginations  may  be  narrow,  crude,  and 
repulsive,  while  the  poet's  more  conscious  fictions  may  be 
highly  wrought  into  shapes  of  fresh  artistic  beauty,  but 
both  share  in  that  sense  of  the  reality  of  ideas,  which  fortu- 
nately or  unfortunately  modern  education  has  proved  so 
powerful  to  destroy.  The  change  of  meaning  of  a  single 
word  will  tell  the  history  of  this  transition,  ranging  from 
primflBval  to  modem  thought.  From  first  to  last,  the 
processes  of  phantasy  have  been  at  work ;  but  where  the 
savage  could  see  phantasms,  the  civilized  man  has  come  to 
amuse  himself  with  fancies. 


>ii 


m 


.  '1 


of 

leans 

:s  ago 

get  a 

loup- 

Ite  his 

irkable 


inai 


ded 
lable  to 
lelief  oi 
Ithis,  it 


!. 


lit,  '  Norse 

lirauil, 


L\i8\>i. 


vol. 


[gil.  Eclog- 
Do  Civ. 
'  Deutsche 


1f 

11 


M\ 


Ui 


li   1       •  <!i*> 


i 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MYTHOLOGY— confonwrf. 

Natnre-myths,  their  origin,  canon  of  interpretation,  preservation  of  original 
sense  and  significant  names  -Nature-myths  of  upper  savage  races  cum- 
pared  with  related  forms  among  barbaric  and  civilized  nations — Heaven 
and  Earth  as  Universal  Parents — Sun  and  Moon  :  Eclipse  and  Sunset,  as 
Hero  or  Maiden  swallowed  by  Monster ;  Rising  of  Sun  from  Sea  and 
Descent  to  Under- World  ;  Jaws  of  Night  and  Death,  Symplegades  ;  Eye 
of  Heaven,  eye  of  Odin  and  the  Craite — Sun  and  Moon  as  mythic  civi- 
lizers— Moon,  her  inconstancy,  periodical  death  and  revival — Stars,  their 
generation — Constellations,  their  place  in  Mythology  and  Astronomy- 
Wind  and  Tempest -Thunder— Earthquake. 

From  laying  down  general  principles  of  myth-develop- 
ment, we  may  now  proceed  to  survey  the  class  of  Nature- 
myths,  such  especially  as  seem  to  have  their  earliest  source 
and  truest  meaning  among  the  lower  races  of  mankind. 

Science,  investigating  nature,  discusses  its  facts  and 
announces  its  laws  in  technical  language  which  is  clear  and 
accui'ate  to  trained  students,  hut  which  falls  only  as  a 
mystic  jargon  on  the  ears  of  barharians,  or  peasants,  or 
children.  It  is  to  the  comprehension  of  just  these  simple 
unschooled  minds  that  the  language  of  poetic  myth  is 
spoken,  so  far  at  least  as  it  is  true  poetry,  and  not  its 
quaint  affected  imitation.  The  poet  contemj)lates  the  same 
natural  world  as  thfi  man  of  science,  but  in  his  so  different 
craft  strives  to  render  difficult  thought  easy  by  making  it 
visible  and  tangible,  above  all  by  referring  the  being  and 
movement  of  the  world  to  such  personal  life  as  his  hearers 
feel  within  themselves,  and  thus  working  out  in  far- 
stretched  fancy  the  maxim  that  "  Man  is  the  measure  of  all 
things."     Let  but  the   key  be   recovered  to  this   mythic 


MYTHOLOGY. 


817 


dialect,  and  its  complex  and  shifting  terms  will  translate 
themselves  into  reality,  and  show  how  far  legend,  in  its 
sympathetic  fictions  of  war,  love,  crime,  adventure,  fate,  is 
only  telling  the  perennial  story  of  the   world's   daily  life. 
The  myths  shaped  out  of  those  endless  analogies  between 
man  and  nature  which  are  the  soul  of  all  poetry,  into  those 
half-human  stories  still  so  full  to  us  of  unfading  life  and 
beauty,  are  the  masterpieces  of  an  art  belonging  rather  to 
the  past  than  to  the  present.     The  growth  of  myth  has 
been    checked    by   science,    it   is    dying   of    weights    and 
measures,  of   proportions  and  specimens — it   is    not    only 
dying,  but  half  dead,  and  students  are  anatomising  it.     In 
this  world  one  must  do  what  one  can,  and  if  the  moderns 
cannot  feel  myth  as  their  forefathers  did,  at  least  the}'  can 
analyse  it.     There   is  a  kind  of  intellectual  frontier   with- 
in  which    he   must   be    who   will    sympathise  with    myth, 
while  he  must  be  without  who  will  investigate  it,  and  it  is 
our  fortune  that  we  live  near  this  frontier-line,  and  can  go 
in   and    out.     European    scholars    can  still   in   a    measure 
understand  the  belief  of  Greeks   or  Aztecs  or  Maoris  in 
their  native  myths,  and  at  the  same  time  can  compare  and 
interpret  them  without  the  scruples  of  men  to  whom  such 
tales  are  histor}',  and  even  sacred  history.     Moreover,  were 
the  whole  human  race  at  a  uniform  level  of  culture  with 
ourselves,  it  would  be  hard  to  bring  our  minds  to  conceive 
of  tribes  in  the  mental  state  to  which  the  earl}'  growth  of 
nature-myth  belongs,  even  as  it  is  now  hard  to  picture  to 
ourselves  a  condition  of  mankind  lower  than  any  that  has 
been  actually  found.      But  the  various  grades  of  existing 
civilization   preserve   the   landmarks    of  a   long  course  of 
history,  and  there    survive   by  millions  savages   and   bar- 
barians whose  minds  still  produce,  in  rude  archaic  forms, 
man's  early  mythic  representations  of  nature. 

Those  who  read  for  the  first  time  the  dissertations  of  the 
modern  school  of  mythologists,  and  sometimes  even  those 
who  have  been  familiar  with  them  for  years,  are  prone  to 
ask,  with  half-incredulous  appreciation  of  the  beauty  and 


. 


i 


VI 


I  1 1  - 


1    ' 


m 


H 


318 


MYTHOLOGY. 


11 

i; 

:  (-7 

■    <    ;i 

K     ! 


m  ! 


simplicit}'  of  their  interpretations,  can  they  be  really  true  ? 
Can  so  great  a  part  of  the  legendarj'  lore  of  classic,  bar- 
barian, and  mediaeval  Europe  be  taken  up  with  the  ever- 
lasting depiction  of  Sun  and  Sky,  Da^vn  and  Gloaming, 
Day  and  Night,  Summer  and  Winter,  Cloud  and  Tempest ; 
can  so  many  of  the  personages  of  tradition,  for  all  their 
heroic  human  aspect, have  their  real  origin  in  anthropo- 
morphic myths  of  nature  ?  Without  any  attempt  to 
discuss  these  opinions  at  large,  it  will  be  seen  that  in- 
spection of  nature -mythology  from  the  present  point  of 
view  tells  in  their  favour,  at  least  as  to  principle.  The 
general  theory  that  such  direct  conceptions  of  nature  as 
are  so  naively  and  even  baldly  uttei-ed  in  the  Veda,  are 
among  the  primary  sources  of  myth,  is  enforced  by 
evidence  gained  elsewhere  in  the  world.  Especially  the 
traditions  of  savage  races  display  mythic  conceptions  of  the 
outer  world,  primitive  like  those  of  the  ancient  Aryans, 
agreeing  with  them  in  their  general  character,  and  often 
remarkably  corresponding  in  their  very  ejiisodes.  At  the 
same  time  it  must  be  clearly  understood  that  the  truth  of 
such  a  general  principle  is  no  warrant  for  all  the  particular 
interpretations  which  mythologists  claim  to  base  upon  it, 
for  of  these  in  fiict  many  are  wildly  speculative,  and  many 
hor>clessly  unsound.  Nature-myth  demands  indeed  a 
x-ocognition  of  its  vast  importance  in  the  legendary  lore  of 
mankind,  but  only  so  far  as  its  claim  is  backed  by  strong 
and  legitimate  evidence. 

The  close  and  deep  analogies  between  the  life  of  nature 
and  the  life  of  man  have  been  for  ages  dwelt  upon  by  poets 
and  philosophers,  who  in  simile  or  in  argument  have  told  of 
light  and  darkness,  of  calm  and  tempest,  of  birth,  growth, 
change,  decay,  dissolution,  renewal.  But  no  one-sided  in- 
terpretation can  be  permitted  to  absorb  into  a  single  theory 
such  endless  many-sided  correspondences  as  these.  Rash 
inferences  which  on  the  strength  of  mere  resemblance  derive 
episodes  of  myth  from  episodes  of  nature  must  be  regarded 
with  utter  mistrust,  for  the  student  who  has  no  more  strin- 


MYTHOLOGY. 


311) 


gent  criterion  than  this  for  his  myths  of  sun  and  sky  and 
dawn,  will  find  them  wherever  it  pleases  him  to  seek  them. 
It  may  be  judged  by  simple  trial  what  such  a  method  may 
lead  to ;  no  legend,  no  allegory,  no  nursery  rhyme,  is  safe 
from  the  hermeneutics  of  a  thorough-going  mythologic 
theorist.  Should  he,  for  instance,  demand  as  his  property 
the  nursery  "  Song  of  Sixpence,"  his  claim  would  be  easily 
established  :  obviously  the  four-and-twenty  blackbirds  are 
the  four-and-twenty  hours,  and  the  pie  that  holds  them  is 
the  underlying  earth  covered  with  the  overarching^  sky;  how 
true  a  touch  of  nature  it  is  that  when  the  pie  is  opened, 
that  is,  when  day  breaks,  the  birds  begin  to  sing ;  the 
King  is  the  Sun,  and  his  countmg  out  his  money  is  pouring 
out  the  sunshine,  the  golden  shower  of  Danae  ;  the  Queen 
is  the  MooT",  and  her  transparent  honey  the  moonlight;  the 
Maid  is  the  "rosy-fingered"  Da^v^l  who  rises  before  the  Sun 
her  master,  and  hangs  out  the  clouds,  his  clothes,  across 
the  sky  ;  the  particular  blackbird  who  so  tragically'  ends  the 
tale  by  snipping  off  her  nose,  is  the  hour  of  sunrise.  The 
time-honoured  rhyme  really  wants  but  one  thing  to  prove  it 
a  Sun-myth,  that  one  thing  being  a  proof  by  some  argument 
more  valid  than  analogy.  Or  if  historical  characters  be 
selected  with  any  discretion,  it  is  easy  to  point  out  the  solar 
episodes  embodied  in  their  lives.  See  Cortes  landing  in 
Mexico,  and  seeming  to  the  Aztecs  their  very  Sun-priest 
Quetzalcoatl,  come  back  from  the  East  to  renew  his  reign 
of  light  and  glory ;  mark  him  deserting  the  wife  of  his 
youth,  even  as  tlie  Sun  leaves  the  Dawn,  and  again  in  later 
life  abandoning  Marina  for  a  new  bride ;  watch  his  sun-like 
career  of  brilliant  conquest,  checkered  with  intervals  of 
storm,  and  declining  to  a  death  clouded  with  sorrow  and 
disgrace.  The  life  of  Julius  Caesar  would  fit  as  plausibly 
into  a  scheme  of  solar  myth ;  his  splendid  course  as  in  each 
new  land  he  came,  and  saw,  and  conquered ;  his  desertion 
of  Cleopatra  ;  his  ordinance  of  the  solar  year  for  men ;  his 
death  at  the  hand  oi  Brutus,  like  Sifrit's  death  at  the  hand 
of  Hagen  in  the  Nibelungen  Lied  ;  his  falling  pierced  witb 


'  i  'I 


320 


MVTllOLOaT. 


^1?    ! 


many  bleeding  wounds,  and  shrouding  himself  in  his  cloak 
to  die  in  darkness.  Of  Ctesar,  better  than  of  Cassius  his 
slayer,  it  might  have  been  said  in  the  language  of  sun- 
myth  : 

".  .  .  O  setting  sun, 

As  in  thy  red  rays  thou  dost  sink  to-night, 

So  in  his  red  blood  Cassius'  day  is  set ; 

Tho  sun  of  Eome  is  set  I  " 

Thus,  in  interpreting  heroic  legend  as  based  on  nature- 
myth,  circumstantial  analogy  must  be  very  cautiously  ap- 
pealed to,  and  at  any  rate  there  is  need  of  evidence  more 
cogent  than  vague  likenesses  between  human  and  cosmic 
life.  Now  such  evidence  is  forthcoming  at  its  strongest  in 
a  crowd  of  myths,  whose  open  meaning  it  would  be  wanton 
incredulity  to  doubt,  so  little  do  they  disguise,  in  name  or 
sense,  the  familiar  aspects  of  nature  which  they  figure  as 
scenes  of  personal  life.  Even  where  the  tellers  of  legend 
may  have  altered  or  forgotten  its  earlier  mythic  meaning, 
there  are  often  sufficient  grounds  for  an  attempt  to  restore 
it.  In  spite  of  change  and  corruption,  myths  are  slow  to 
lofee  all  consciousness  of  their  first  origin ;  as  for  instance, 
classical  literature  retained  enou^uh  of  meaning  in  the  great 
Greek  sun-myth,  to  compel  even  Lempriere  of  the  Classical 
Dictionary  to  admit  that  Apollo  or  Phojbus  "is  often  con- 
founded with  the  sun."  For  another  instance,  the  Greeks 
had  still  present  to  their  thoughts  the  meaning  of  Argos 
Panoptes,  lo's  hundred-eyed,  all-seeing  guard  who  was  slain 
by  Hermes  and  changed  into  ilie  Peacock,  for  Macrobius 
writes  as  recognizing  in  him  the  star-eyed  hea/en  itself;^ 
even  as  the  Aryan  Indra,  the  Sky,  is  the  "  thousand- 
eyed  "  {saliasidksha,  saJiasranayana).  In  modern  times  the 
thought  is  found  surviving  or  reviving  in  a  strange  region  of 
language  :  whoever  it  was  that  brought  argo  as  a  word  for 
"heaven"  into  the  Lingua  Furbesca  or  Robbers'  Jargon  of 
Italy,^  must  have  been  thinking  of  the  starry  sky  watching 

>  Macrob.  '  Saturn.' i.  19,  12.     Sue  Eurip.  Phoen.   1116,  etc.  and  Schol. 
Welcker,  vol.  i.  p.  ^36  ;  Max  Miiller,  '  Lectures,'  voL  ii.  p.  380. 
-  Fiaueisque-Michel,  'Argot,'  p.  425. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


321 


liim  like  Argus  with  his  hundred  eyes.  The  etymology 
of  names,  moreover,  is  at  once  the  guide  and  safeguard 
of  the  mythologist.  The  obvious  meaning  of  words  did 
much  to  preserve  vestiges  of  plain  sense  in  classic  legend, 
in  spite  of  all  the  efforts  of  the  commentators.  There 
was  no  disputing  the  obvious  facts  that  Helios  was  the 
Sun,  and  Selene  the  Moon ;  and  as  for  Jove,  all  the  non- 
sense of  pseudo-history  could  not  quite  do  away  the  idea 
that  he  was  really  Heaven,  for  language  continued  to  de- 
clare this  in  such  expressions  as  "  sub  Jove  frigido."  The 
explanation  of  the  rape  of  Persephone,  as  a  nature-myth  of 
summer  and  winter,  does  not  depend  alone  on  analogy  of 
incident,  but  has  the  very  names  to  prove  its  reality,  Zeus, 
Plelios,  Demeier — Heaven,  and  Sun,  and  Mother  Earth. 
Lastl}',  in  stories  of  mythic  beings  who  are  the  presiding 
genii  of  star  or  mountain,  tree  or  river,  or  heroes  and 
heroines  actually  metamOi;)hosed  into  such  objects,  personi- 
fication of  nature  is  still  plainly  evident ;  the  poet  may  still 
as  of  old  see  Atlas  bear  the  heavens  on  his  mighty  shoulders, 
and  Alpheus  in  impetuous  course  pursue  the  maiden 
Arethusa. 

In  a  study  of  the  nature-myths  of  the  world,  it  is  hardly 
practicable  to  start  from  the  conceptions  of  the  very  lowest 
human  tribes,  and  to  work  upwards  from  thence  to  ficiions 
of  higher  growth ;  partly  because  our  information  is  but 
meagre  as  to  the  beliefs  of  these  shy  and  seldom  quite  intel- 
Hgible  folk,  and  partly  because  the  legends  they  possess 
have  not  reached  that  artistic  and  systematic  shape  which 
they  attain  to  am  ^  races  next  higher  in  the  scale.  It 
therefore  answers  better  to  take  as  a  foundation  the 
mythology  of  the  North  American  Indians,  the  South  Sea 
Islanders,  and  other  high  savage  tribes  who  best  reprcser.'t 
in  modern  times  the  early  mythologic  period  ox  human 
history.  The  survey  may  be  iitly  commen  jed  by  a 
singularly  perfect  and  purposeful  cosmic  myth  from  New 
Zealand. 

It  seems  long  ago  and  often  to  have  come  into  men's 

VOU    I.  V 


(,  ,1 
i'. 


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ii«f 


322 


MYTHOLOGY. 


m 

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minds,  that  the  overarching  Heaven  and  the  all-producinn 
Earth  are,  as  it  were,  a  Father  and  a  Mother  of  the  world, 
whose  offspring  are  the  hving  creatures,  men,  and  beasts, 
and  phints.  Nowhere,  in  the  telling  of  this  oft-told  tale,  is 
present  nature  veiled  in  more  transparent  personification, 
nowhere  is  the  world's  familiar  dail>'  life  repeated  with  more 
childlike  simplicity  as  a  story  of  long  past  ages,  than  in  the 
legend  of  *  The  Children  of  Heaven  and  Earth  '  written  down 
by  Sir  George  Grey  among  the  Maoris  not  twenty  years 
ago.  From  Rangi,  the  Heaven,  and  Papa,  the  Earth,  it  is 
said,  sprang  all  men  and  things,  but  sky  and  earth  clave 
together,  and  darkness  rested  upon  them  and  the  beings 
they  had  begotten,  till  at  last  their  children  took  counsel 
whether  they  should  rend  apart  their  parents,  or  slay  them. 
Then  Tane-mahuta,  father  of  forests,  said  to  his  five  great 
brethren,  "It  is  better  to  rend  them  apart,  and  to  let  the 
heaven  stand  far  above  us,  and  the  earth  lie  under  our  feet. 
Let  the  sky  become  as  a  stranger  to  us,  but  the  earth  remain 
close  to  us  as  our  nursing  mother."  So  Rongo-ma-tane, 
god  and  father  of  the  cultivated  food  of  man,  arose  and 
strove  to  separate  the  heaven  and  the  earth ;  he  struggled, 
but  in  vain,  and  vain  too  were  the  efforts  of  Tangaroa, 
father  of  fish  and  reptiles,  and  of  Haumia-tikitiki,  father  of 
wild-growing  food,  and  of  Tu-matauenga,  god  and  father  of 
fierce  men.  Then  slow  uprises  Tane-mahuta,  god  and 
father  of  forests,  and  wrestles  with  his  parents,  striving  to 
part  them  with  his  hands  and  arms.  "  Lo,  he  pauses ;  his 
head  is  now  firmly  planted  on  his  mother  the  earth,  his  feet 
he  raises  up  and  rests  against  his  father  the  skies,  he  strains 
his  back  and  limbs  with  mighty  effort.  Now  are  rent  apart 
Rangi  and  Papa,  and  with  cries  and  groans  of  woe  they 
shriek  aloud  ....  But  Tane-mahuta  pauses  not ;  far,  far 
beneath  him  he  presses  down  the  earth  ;  far,  far  above  him 
he  thrusts  up  the  sky."  But  Tawhiri-ma-tea,  father  of 
winds  and  storms,  had  never  consented  that  his  mother 
should  be  torn  from  her  lord,  and  now  there  arose  in  his 
breast  a  tierce  desire  to  war  against  his  brethren.     So  the 


MYTHOLOGY. 


323 


Storm-god  rose  and  followed  his  father  to  the  renlms  above, 
hurrying  to  the  sheltered  hollows  of  the  boundless  skies,  to 
hide  and  cling  and  nestle  there.  Then  came  forth  his  pro- 
geny, the  mighty  winds,  the  fierce  squalls,  the  clouds,  dense, 
dark,  fiery,  wildly  drifting,  wildly  bursting;  and  in  their 
midst  their  father  rushed  upon  his  foe.  Tane-mahuta  and  his 
giant  forests  stood  unconscious  and  unsuspecting  when  the 
raging  hurricane  burst  on  them,  snapping  the  miglity  trees 
across,  leaving  trunks  and  branches  rent  and  torn  upon  the 
ground  for  the  insect  and  the  grub  to  prey  on.  Then  the 
father  of  storms  swooped  down  to  lash  the  waters  into 
billows  whose  summits  rose  like  clitfs,  till  Tangaroa,  god  of 
ocean  and  father  of  all  that  dwell  therein,  fled  atfrighted 
through  his  seas.  His  children,  Ika-tere,  the  father  of  fisli, 
and  Tu-te-wehiwehi,  the  father  of  reptiles,  sought  where 
they  might  escape  for  safety;  the  father  of  fish  cried,  "Ho, 
ho,  let  us  all  escape  to  the  sea,"  but  the  father  of  reptdes 
shouted  in  answer,  "Nay,  nay,  let  us  rather  fly  inland,"  and 
so  these  creatures  separated,  for  while  the  fish  fled  into  the 
sea,  the  reptiles  sought  safety  in  the  forests  and  scrubs. 
But  the  sea-god  Tangaroa,  furious  that  his  children  the 
reptiles  should  have  deserted  him,  has  ever  since  waged  war 
on  his  brother  Tane  who  gave  them  shelter  in  his  woods. 
Tane  attacks  him  in  return,  supplying  the  offspring  of  his 
brother  Tu-matauenga,  father  of  fierce  men,  with  canoes 
and  spears  and  fish-hooks  made  from  his  trees,  and  with 
nets  woven  from  his  fibrous  plants,  that  they  may  destroy 
withal  the  fish,  the  Sea-god's  children;  and  the  Sea-god 
turns  in  wrath  upon  the  Forest-god,  overwhelms  his  canoes 
with  the  surges  of  the  sea,  sweeps  with  floods  his  trees  and 
houses  into  the  boundless  ocean.  Next  the  god  of  storms 
pushed  on  to  attack  his  brothers  the  gods  and  progenitoi^s 
of  the  tilled  food  and  the  wild,  but  Pai^a,  the  Earth,  caught 
them  up  and  hid  them,~ftnxl  so  safely  were  these  her  children 
concealed  by  their  mother,  that  the  Storm-god  sought  for 
them  in  vain.     So  he  fell  upon  the  last  of  his  brothers,  the 

father  of  fierce  men,  but  him   he  could  not    even  shake, 

Y  2 


11 


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i|  'it- 
I 


324 


MYTHOLOGY. 


'«( 


In 


!:i!i 


though  he  put  forth  all  his  strength.  What  cared  Tu- 
matauenga  for  his  brother's  wrath  ?  He  it  was  who  had 
planned  the  destruction  of  their  parents,  and  had  shown 
himself  brave  and  fierce  in  war ;  his  brethren  had  yielded 
before  the  tremendous  onset  of  the  Storm-god  and  his  pro- 
geny ;  the  Forest-god  and  his  offsjiring  had  been  broken 
and  torn  in  pieces  ;  the  Sea-god  and  his  children  had  fled  to 
the  depths  of  the  ocean  or  the  recesses  of  the  shore ; 
the  gods  of  food  had  been  safe  in  hiding ;  but  Man  still 
stood  erect  and  unshaken  upon  the  bosom  of  his  mother 
Earth,  and  at  last  the  hearts  of  the  Heaven  and  the  Storm 
became  tranquil,  and  their  passion  was  assuaged. 

But  now  Tu-niatauengii,  father  of  fierce  men,  took  thought 
how  he  might  be  avenged  upon  his  brethren  who  had  left 
him  unaided  to  stand  against  the  god  of  storms.  He  twisted 
nooses  of  the  leaves  of  the  whanake  tree,  and  the  birds  and 
beasts,  children  of  Tane  the  Forest-god,  fell  before  him  ;  he 
netted  nets  from  the  flax-plant,  and  dragged  ashore  the  fish, 
the  children  of  Tangaroa  the  Sea-god ;  he  found  in  their 
hiding-place  underground  the  children  of  Rongo-ma-tane, 
the  sweet  potato  and  all  cultivated  food,  and  the  children  of 
Haumia-tikitiki,  the  fern-root  and  all  wild-growing  food,  he 
dug  them  up  and  let  them  wither  in  the  sun.  Yet,  though 
he  overcame  his  four  brothers,  and  they  became  his  food, 
over  the  fiftli  he  could  not  prevail,  and  Tawhiri-ma-tea,  the 
Storm-god,  still  ever  attacks  him  in  tempest  and  hurricane, 
striving  to  destroy  him  both  by  sea  and  land.  It  was  the 
bui'sting  forth  of  the  Storm-god's  wrath  against  his  brethren 
that  caused  the  dry  land  to  disappear  beneath  the  waters : 
the  beings  of  ancient  days  who  thus  submerged  the  land 
were  Terrible-rain,  Long-continued-rain,  Fierce-hailstorms  ; 
and  their  progeny  were  Mist,  and  Heavy-dew,  and  Light- 
dew,  and  thus  but  little  of  the  dry  land  was  left  standing 
above  the  sea.  Then  clear  light  increased  in  the  world,  and 
the  beings  who  had  been  hidden  between  Rangi  and  Papa 
before  they  were  parted,  now  multiplied  upon  the  earth. 
"  Up  to  this  time  the  vast  Heaven  has  still  ever  remained 


i:  -J  :.i;i! 


il 


Mi'THOLOUV 


S-2o 


separated  from  liis  spouse  the  Earth.  Yet  their  mutual 
love  still  condnues ;  the  soft  warm  sighs  of  her  loving 
bosom  still  ever  rise  up  to  him,  ascending  from  the  woody 
mountains  and  valleys,  and  men  call  these  mists ;  and  the 
vast  Heaven,  as  he  mourns  through  Cue  long  nights  his 
separation  from  his  beloved,  drops  frequent  tears  upon  her 
bosom,  and  men  seeing  these  term  them  dew-drops."  ^ 

The  rending  asunder  of  heaven  and  earth  is  a  far-spread 
Polynesian  legend,  well  known  in  the  island  groups  that 
lie  away  to  the  north-east.^  Its  elaboration,  however,  into 
the  myth  here  sketched  out  was  probably  native  New 
Zealand  work.  Nor  need  it  be  supposed  that  the  par- 
ticular form  in  which  the  English  governor  took  it  down 
among  the  Maori  priests  and  tale-tellers,  is  of  ancient  date. 
The  story  carries  in  itself  evidence  of  an  antiquit}'  of 
character  which  does  not  necessarily  belong  to  mere  lapse 
of  centuries.  Just  as  the  adzes  of  polished  jade  and  the 
cloaks  of  tied  flax-fibre,  which  these  New  Zealanders  were 
using  but  yesterday,  are  older  in  their  place  in  history  than 
tlip  bronze  battle-axes  and  linen  mumm}'  cloths  of  ancient 
Egypt,  so  the  Maori  poet's  shaping  of  nature  into  nature- 
myth  belongs  to  a  stage  of  intellectual  history  which  was 
passing  away  in  Greece  five-and-twenty  centuries  ago. 
The  myth-maker's  fancy  of  Heaven  and  Earth  as  father 
and  mother  of  all  things  naturally  suggested  the  legend 
that  they  in  old  days  abode  together,  but  have  since  begn 
torn  asunder.  In  China  the  same  idea  of  the  universal 
parentage  is  accompanied  by  a  similar  legend  of  the  separa- 
tion. Whether  or  not  there  is  historical  connexion  here 
between  the  mythology  of  Polynesia  and  China,  I  will  not 
guess,    but   certainly   the   ancient   Chinese   legend   of  the 

'  Sir  G.  Grey,  •  Polynesian  Mythology,'  p.  i.  etc.,  translated  from  the 
original  Maori  text  published  by  him  under  the  title  '  Ko  nga  Mahinga  a  nga 
Tupuna  Maori,  etc'  London,  1854.  Compare  with  Shortland,  'Trads.  of  '  N. 
Z.'  p.  55,  etc.  ;  R.  Taylor,  'New  Zealand,'  p.  114,  etc. 

^  Schirren,  '  Wandorsugen  der  Neuseeliinder,  etc'  p.  42  ;   Ellis,   '  Polyn, 
Ees.'  voL  i.  p.  116 ;  Tyerman  and  Bennet,  p.  626 ;  Turner,  '  Polynesia, 
p.  245. 


■. .   il 


M 


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C,  I 


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'./, 


I  I 


liii. 


326 


MYTHOLOGY. 


separation  of  heaven  and  earth  in  the  primeval  days  of 
Puang-Ku  seems  to  have  taken  the  very  sh.ipe  of  the 
Polynesian  myth :  "  Some  say  a  person  called  Puang-Ku 
opened  or  separated  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  they  pre- 
viously' being  pressed  down  close  together."  ^  As  to  the 
mythic  details  in  the  whole  story  of  *  The  Children  of 
Heaven  and  Earth,'  there  is  scarcely  a  thought  that  is  not 
still  transparent,  scarcely  even  a  word  that  has  lost  its 
meaning  to  us.  The  broken  and  stiffened  traditions  which 
our  fiithers  fancied  relics  of  ancient  history  are,  as  has  been 
truly  said,  records  of  a  past  which  was  never  present;  but 
the  simple  nature-myth,  as  we  tind  it  in  its  actual  growth, 
or  reconstruct  it  from  its  legendary  remnants,  ma^'  be 
rather  called  the  record  of  a  present  which  is  never  past. 
The  battle  of  the  storm  against  the  forest  and  the  ocean 
is  still  waged  before  our  eyes;  we  still  look  upon  the  victory 
of  man  over  the  creatures  of  the  land  and  sea ;  the  food- 
plants  still  hide  in  their  mother  earth,  and  the  fish  and 
reptiles  find  shelter  in  the  ocean  and  the  thicket ;  but  the 
mighty  forest-trees  stand  with  their  roots  firm  planted  in 
the  ground,  while  with  their  branches  thej'  push  up  and  up 
against  the  sk}'.  And  if  we  have  learnt  the  secret  of  man's 
thought  in  the  childhoou  of  his  race,  we  may  still  realize 
with  the  savage  the  personal  being  of  the  ancestral  Heaven 
and  Earth. 

The  idea  of  the  Earth  as  a  mother  is  more  simple  and 
obvious,  and  no  doubt  for  that  reason  more  common  in  the 
world,  than  the  idea  of  the  Heaven  as  a  father.  Among 
the  native  races  of  America  the  Earth-mother  is  one  of  the 
great  personages  of  mythology.  The  Peruvians  worshipped 
her  as  Mama-Ppacha  or  *'  Mother-Earth ; "  the  Caribs, 
when  there  was  an  earthquake,  said  it  was  their  mother 
Earth  dancing,  and  signifying  to  them  to  dance  and  make 
merry  liliewise,  which  accordingly  they  did.  Among  the 
North-American  Indians  the  Comanches  call  on  the  Earth 

'  Premare  in   Fauthicr,    '  Livres    Sacr68   de   rOrient,'  p.  19 ;    Doolittle, 
'  Oliinesf,'  vol.  ii.  p.  396. 


$ 


MYTHOLOGY. 


327 


(lays  oi 
of  the 

lang-Ku 

hey  pre- 

5  to  the 

Idren  of 

it  is  not 
lost  its 

ns  whicli 

has  been 

sent;  but 

I  growth, 
may  be 

;ver  past. 

the  ocean 

he  victory 
the  food- 
fish  and 
;  but  the 
ilanted  in 
lP  and  up 
of  man's 
ill  realize 

|al  Heaven 

kmple  and 
ton  in  the 
Among 
lone  of  the 
irorshipped 
le    Caribs, 
Mr  mother 
land  make 
imong  the 
the  Earth 

;    Duolittle, 


as  their  mother,  and  the  Great  Spirit  as  their  father.  A 
story  told  by  Gregg  shows  a  somewhat  diffeient  thought 
of  mythic  parentage.  General  Harrison  once  called  the 
Shawnee  chief  Tecumseh  for  a  talk: — "Come  here,  Te- 
cumseh,  and  sit  by  your  fsither ! "  he  said.  "  You  my 
father  !  "  replied  the  chief,  with  a  stern  air.  *'  No  !  yonder 
sun  (pointing  towards  it)  is  my  father,  and  the  earth  is  my 
mother,  so  I  will  rest  on  her  bosom,"  and  he  sat  down  on 
the  ground.  Like  this  was  the  Aztec  fancy,  as  it  seems 
from  this  passage  in  a  Mexican  prayer  to  Tezcatlipoca, 
offered  in  time  of  war:  *'  Be  pleased,  0  our  Lord,  that  thu 
nobles  who  shall  die  in  the  war  be  peacefully  and  joyously 
received  by  the  Sun  and  the  Earth,  who  are  the  loving 
father  and  mother  of  all."^  In  the  mythology  of  Finns, 
Lapps,  and  Estli-,  ^arth-Mother  is  a  divinely  honoured 
]>ersonage.^     Thru'  he  mythology  of  our  own  country 

ih'  same  thought  •  .e  traced,  from  the  days  when  the 
Anglo-Saxon  called  upon  the  Earth,  "  Hal  wes  thu  folde, 
lira  modor,"  **  Hail  thou  Earth,  men's  mother,"  to  the  time 
when  mediaeval  Englishmen  made  a  riddle  of  her,  asking 
"Who  is  Adam's  mother?"  and  poetry  continued  what 
mythology  was  letting  fall,  when  Milton's  archangel  pro- 
mised Adam  a  life  to  last 

"  ....  till  like  ripe  fruit,  thou  drop 
Into  thy  mother's  lap."  ' 

Among  the  Aryan  race,  indeed,  there  stands,  wide  and 
firm,  the  double  myth  of  the  "  two  great  parents,"  as  the 
Eig-Veda  calls  them.  They  are  Dyaushpitar,  Zeis  -naTijp, 
Jupiter y    the    "  Heaven-father,"    and    Prthivi    mdtary    the 


»  J.  G.  MuUer,  'Amer.  Unelig.'  pp.  108,  110,  117,  221,  869,  494,  620; 
Rivero  and  Tschudi,  'Ant  of  Pera,"  p.  161  ;  Gregg,  'Journal  of  a  Santa  F6 
Trader,'  vol.  ii.  p.  237  ;  Salmgiui,  '  Retorica,  etc.,  Moxicana,'  cap.  3,  in  Kings- 
borough,  '  Ant.  of  Mexico,'  vol.  v. 

2  Castren,  'Finn.  Myth.'  p.  86. 

8  Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  p.  xix.  2-.i9-33,  608  ;  Halliwell,  'Pop.  Rhymes,'  p.  163  ; 
Milton,  'Paradise  Lost,'  ix.  273,    i.  635  ;  see  Lucretius,  i.  250. 


^  i'ilV 


*    'j! 


!'l  ■ 


!  I 


I' 


fir.   ! 


•>0'«! 


MYTHOLOGY. 


i     ! 


"Earth-mother;"  and  their  relation  is  still  kept  in  mind 
in  the  ordinance  of  Brahman  marriage  according  to  the 
Yajur-Veda,  where  the  bridegroom  says  to  the  bride,  "  I 
am  the  sky,  thou  art  the  earth,  come  let  us  marry."  When 
Greek  poets  called  Ouranos  and  Gaia,  or  Zeus  and  Demeter, 
husband  and  wife,  what  they  meant  was  the  union  of  Heaven 
and  Earth;  and  when  Plato  said  that  the  earth  brought 
forth  men,  but  God  was  their  shaper,  the  same  old  mythic 
thought  must  have  been  present  to  his  mind.^  It  re-appears 
in  ancient  Scythia  ;^  and  again  in  China,  where  Heaven  and 
Earth  are  called  in  the  Shu- King  "Father  and  Mother  of 
all  things."  Chinese  philosophy  naturally  worked  this  idea 
into  the  scheme  of  the  two  great  principles  of  nature,  the 
Yn  and  Yang,  male  and  female,  heavenly  and  earthly,  and 
from  this  disposition  of  nature  they  drew  a  practical  moral 
lesson:  Heaven,  said  the  philosophers  of  the  Sung  dynasty, 
made  man,  and  Earth  made  woman,  and  therefore  woman 
is  to  be  subject  to  man  as  Earth  to  Heaven.' 

Entering  next  upon  the  world-wide  myths  of  Sun,  Mc  on, 
and  Stars,  the  regularity  and  consistency  of  human  imagina- 
tion may  be  first  displaj'ed  in  the  beliefs  connected  with 
eclipses.  It  is  well  known  that  these  phenomena,  to  us 
now  crucial  instances  of  the  exactness  of  natural  laws,  are, 
throughout  the  lower  stages  of  civilization,  the  very  embodi- 
ment of  miraculous  disaster.  Amttng  the  native  races  of 
America  it  is  possible  to  select  a  typical  series  of  m3'ths 
describing  and  explaining,  according  to  ine  rules  of  savage 
^ihilosoph}',  these  portents  of  dismay.  The  Chiquitos  of 
the  southern  continent  thought  the  Moon  was  hunted 
across  the  sky  by  huge  dogs,  who  caught  and  tore  her  til] 
her  light  was  reddened  and  quenched  by  the  blood  flowing 
from  her  wounds,  and  then  the  Indians,  raising  a  frightful 

'  Max  Miiller.  '  Lectures, '  2n(i  series,  p.  469  ;  Pictet,  '  Origiuos  Indo-Europ.* 
part  ii.  pp.  663-7  ;  Colebrooke,  '  Essays,'  vol.  i.  p.  220. 

8  Herod,  iv.  59. 

■  Plath,  'Religion  der  alten  Chinesen,'  part.  i.  p.  37;  Davis,  'Chinese,' 
vol.  ii.  p.  64  ;  Legge,  '  Confucius,'  p.  106  ;  Baatian,  '  Mensch,'  ^o\.  ii.  p.  437  ; 
vol.  iii.  p.  302. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


329 


,0  the 

When 
imeter, 
leaven 
)rovight 
mythic 
appears 
ven  and 
oiher  of 
this  idea 
ture,  the 
thly,  and 
al  moral 
dynasty, 
e  woman 

n,  Mc3n, 
imagina- 
;cted  with 
|na,  to  ns 
laws,  are, 
y  embodi- 
races  of 
of  myths 
of  savage 
liquitos  of 
|as  hunted 
lore  her  till 
,od  flowing 
a  frightful 

La  Indo-Europ.' 


18,  'Chinese,' 
Uol.  ii.  P-  *37  ; 


howl  and  lamentation,  would  shoot  across  into  the  sky  to 
drive  the  monsters  off.  The  Caribs,  thinking  that  the 
demon  Maboya,  hater  of  all  light,  was  seeking  to  devour 
the  Sun  and  Moon,  would  dance  and  howl  in  concert  all 
night  long  to  scare  him  away.  The  Peruvians,  imagining 
such  an  evil  spirit  in  the  shape  of  a  monstrous  beast,  raised 
the  like  frightful  din  when  the  Moon  was  eclipsed,  shout- 
ing, sounding  musical  instruments,  and  beating  the  dogs 
to  join  their  howls  to  the  hideous  chorus.  Nor  are  such 
ideas  extinct  in  our  own  days.  In  the  Tupi  language,  the 
proper  description  of  a  solar  eclipse  is  '*  oarasu  jaguaret^ 
vu,"  that  is,  "  Jaguar  has  eaten  Sun  ;  "  and  the  full  mean- 
ing of  this  phrase  is  displayed  by  tribes  who  still  shout  and 
let  fly  burning  arrows  to  drive  the  devouring  beast  from  his 
prey.  On  the  northern  continent,  again,  some  savages 
believed  in  a  great  sun-swallowing  dog,  wliile  others  would 
shoot  up  arrows  to  defend  their  luminaries  against  the 
enemies  they  fancied  attacking  them.  By  the  side  of  these 
prevalent  notions  there  occur,  however,  various  others ; 
thus  the  Caribs  could  imagine  the  eclipsed  Moon  hungry, 
sick,  or  dying ;  the  Peruvians  could  fancy  the  Sun  angry 
and  hiding  his  face,  and  the  sick  Moon  likely  to  fall  in 
total  darkness,  and  bring  on  the  end  of  the  world ;  che 
Hurons  thought  the  Moon  sick,  and  explained  their 
customary  charivari  of  shouting  men  and  howling  dogs  as 
performed  to  recover  her  from  her  complaint.  Passing 
on  from  these  most  primitive  conceptions,  it  appears  that 
natives  of  both  South  and  North  America  fell  upon  philo- 
sophic myths  somewhat  nearer  the  real  facts  of  the  case, 
insomuch  as  they  admit  that  the  Sun  and  Moon  cause 
eclipses  of  one  another.  In  Cumana,  men  thought  that 
the  wedded  Sun  and  Moon  quarrelled,  and  that  one  of  them 
was  wounded  ;  and  the  Ojibwas  endeavoured  by  tumultuous 
noise  to  distract  the  two  from  such  a  conflict.  The  course 
of  progressive  science  went  far  beyond  this  among  the 
Aztecs,  who,  as  part  of  their  remarkable  astronomical 
knowledge,  seem  to  have  had  an  idea  of  the  real  cause  of 


M 


i4 


1 1, 


;i 

1  ' 

I  ■ 


S'SO 


MYTHOLOGY, 


i':      i  '    I 


I        , 


■  ml 


eclipses,  but  who  kept  up  a  relic  of  the  old  belief  by  con- 
tinuing to  speak  in  mythologic  phrase  of  the  Sun  and  Moon 
being  eaten.i  Elsewhere  in  the  lower  culture,  there  prevailed 
similar  mythic  conceptions.  In  the  South  Sea  Islands, 
some  supposed  the  Sun  and  Moon  to  be  swallowed  by  an 
offended  deity,  whom  they  therefore  induced,  by  liberal 
offerings,  to  eject  the  luminaries  from  his  stomach.^  In 
Sumatra  we  have  the  comparatively  scientific  notion  that 
an  eclipse  has  to  do  with  the  action  of  Sun  and  Moon  on 
one  another,  and,  accordingly,  they  make  a  loud  noise  with 
sounding  instruments  to  prevent  the  one  from  devouring 
the  otlier.^  So,  in  Africa,  there  may  be  found  both  the 
rudest  theory  of  the  Eclipse-monster,  and  the  more 
advanced  conception  that  a  solar  eclipse  is  "the  Moon 
cateliing  tlie  Sun."* 

It  is  no  cause  for  wonder  that  an  aspect  of  the  heavens  so 
awful  as  an  eclipse  should  in  times  of  astronomic  ignorance 
have  filled  men's  minds  with  terror  of  a  coming  destruction 
of  the  world.  It  may  help  us  still  to  realize  this  thought  if 
we  consider  how,  as  Calmet  pointed  out  many  years  ago,  the 
prophet  Joel  adopted  the  plainest  words  of  description  of 
the  solar  and  lunar  eclipse,  "  The  sun  shall  be  turned  into 
darkness,  and  the  moon  into  blood ;  "  nor  could  the  thought 
of  any  catastrophe  of  nature  have  brouglit  his  hearers  face 
to  face  with  a  more  lurid  and  awful  picture.  But  to  our 
minds,  now  that  the  eclipse  has  long  passed  from  the  realm 
of  mythology  into  the  realm  of  science,  such  words  can 
carry  but  a  feeble  glimmer  of  their  early  meaning.     The 


>  J.  G.  Miiller,  'Amer.  Urrelig.'  pp.  53,  219,  231,  255,  395,  420;  Martina, 
•Ethnog.  Amer.'  vol.  i.  pp.  329,  467,  685  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  109  ;  Southey,  '  Brazil,' 
vol.  i.  p.  3.'2,  vol.  ii.  p.  371  ;  Do  la  Borde,  '  Caruibes,'  p.  525  ;  Dobmhotlur, 
'  Abipones,' vol.  ii.  p.  84;  Smith  and  Lowe,  'Journey  from  Lima  to  Para,' 
p.  230;  Schoolcraft,  'Indian  Tribes  of  N.  A. 'part  i.  p.  271;  Charlevoix, 
'Noiiv.  France,'  vol,  vi  p.  149  ;  Crauz,  '  GriJiiland,'  p.  295  ;  Bastian,  '  Meusch,' 
vol.  iii    p.  191  ;  '  Early  Hist  of  Mankind,'  p.  163. 

2  Ellis,  '  Polyn   Res.'  vol.  i.  p.  331. 

*  Marsdcn,  '  Sumatra,'  p.  194. 

*  Grant  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'vol.  iii.  p.  90;  Koelle,  'Eanuri  Proverbs,  etc' 
p.  207. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


.•^81 


jon* 
'ooii 
liled 
mds, 
)y  an 
iberal 
a    In 
1  tliat 
)on  on 

oumg 
oth  the 
I    more 
Moon 

avens  so 
rnorance 
traction 


r 

lOU 


«lit  if 
ago,  tbe 
ption  of 
rned  into 
thought 
arers  face 
Uit  to  our 
the  reahn 
vords  can 


ing. 


The 


t20  ;  Martivis, 
bey,  •  brazil," 

,ua  to  rava,' 

;  Charlevoix,^ 

Ian,  •  M-ensch.' 


Proverbs,  etc 


ancient  doctrine  of  the  eclipse  has  not  indeed  lost  its  whole 
interest.  To  trace  it  upward  from  its  early  savage  stagea 
to  the  period  when  astronomy  claimed  it,  and  to  follow  the 
course  of  the  ensuing  conflict  over  it  between  theology  and 
science — ended  among  ourselves  but  still  being  slugggishly 
fought  out  among  less  cultured  nations — this  is  to  lay  open 
a  chapter  of  the  history  of  opinion,  from  which  the  student 
who  looks  forward  as  well  as  back  may  learn  grave 
lessons. 

There  is  reason  to  consider  most  or  all  civilized  nations 
to  have  started  from  the  myth  of  the  Eclipse-monster  in 
forms  as  savage  as  those  of  the  New  World.  It  prevails 
still  among  the  great  Asiatic  nations.  The  Hindus  say 
that  the  demon  Rahu  insinuated  himself  among  the  gods, 
and  obtained  a  portion  of  the  amrita,  the  drink  of  immor- 
tality ;  Vishnu  smote  off  the  now  immortal  head,  which 
still  pursues  the  Sun  and  Moon  whose  watchful  gaze 
detected  his  presence  in  the  divine  assembly.  Another 
version  of  the  myth  is  that  there  are  two  demons,  Rahu 
and  Ketu,  who  devour  Sun  and  Moon  respectively,  and  who 
are  described  in  conformity  with  the  phenomena  of  eclipses, 
Rahu  being  black,  and  Ketu  red ;  the  usual  charivari  is 
raised  by  the  populace  to  drive  them  off,  though  indeed, 
as  their  bodies  have  been  cut  off  at  the  neck,  their  prey 
must  of  natural  course  slip  out  as  soon  as  swallowed.  Or 
Rahu  and  Ketu  are  the  head  and  body  of  the  dissevered 
demon,  by  which  conception  the  Eclipse-monster  is  most 
ingeniously  adapted  to  advanced  astronomy,  the  head  and 
tail  being  identified  with  the  ascending  and  descending 
nodes.  The  following  remarks  on  the  eclipse-controversy, 
made  by  Mr.  Samuel  Davis  eighty  years  Hgo  in  the 
Asiatick  Researches,  are  still  full  of  interest.  "  It  is  evident, 
from  what  has  been  explained,  that  the  Pundits,  learned  in 
the  Jyotish  shastru,  have  truer  notions  of  the  form  of 
earth  and  the  economy  of  the  universe  than  are  ascribed 
to  the  Hindoos  in  general :  and  that  they  must  reject 
the   ridiculous    belief    of   the    common    Brahmiins,   that 


•    <1 


i  ha:- 

if 


I  •;  i 


'i  '  i 


itl 


i!  i 


.'. 


332 


MYTHOLOGY. 


'  / 


Ir'f    I 


i  ■; 

H 

1  ■    .                ^ 
:   i 

if 

I  111; 


/ 


I  I 


eclipses  are  occasioned  by  the  intervention  of  the  monstei 
Rahoo,  with  many  other  particulars  equally  unscientific 
and  absurd.  But  as  this  belief  is  founded  on  explicit  and 
positive  declarations  contained  in  the  vediis  and  poorantis, 
the  divine  authority  of  which  writings  no  devout  Hindoo 
can  dispute,  the  astronomers  have  some  of  them  cautiously 
explained  such  passages  in  those  writings  as  disagree  with 
the  principles  of  their  own  .cience :  and  where  recon- 
ciliation was  impossible,  have  apologized,  as  well  as  they 
could,  for  propositions  necessarily  established  in  the 
practice  of  it,  by  observing,  that  certain  things,  as  stated 
in  other  shastrGs,  might  have  been  so  formerly,  and  may 
be  so  still ;  but  for  astronomical  purposes,  astronomical 
rules  must  be  followed."*  It  is  not  easy  to  give  a  more 
salient  example  than  this  of  the  consequence  of  investing 
philosophy  with  the  mantle  of  religion,  and  allowing 
priests  and  scribes  to  convert  the  childlike  science  of  an 
early  age  into  the  sacred  dogma  of  a  late  one.  Asiatic 
peoples  under  Buddhist  iniluence  show  the  eclipse-myth 
in  its  different  stages.  The  rude  Mongols  make  a  clamour 
of  rough  music  to  drive  the  attacking  Aracho  (Balm)  from 
Sun  or  Moon.  A  Buddhist  version  mentioned  by  Dr. 
Bastian  describes  Indra  the  Heaven-god  pursuing  Rahu 
with  his  thunderbolt,  and  ripping  open  his  belly,  so  that 
although  he  can  swallow  the  heavenly  bodies,  he  lets  them 
slip  out  again.2  The  more  civilized  nations  of  South-East 
Asia,  accepting  the  eclipse-demons  Bahu  and  Ketu,  were  not 
quite  staggered  in  their  belief  by  the  foreigners'  power  of 
foretelling  eclipses,  nor  even  by  learning  roughly  to  do  the 
same  themselves.  The  Chinese  have  official  announcement 
of  an  eclipse  duly  made  beforehand,  and  then  proceed  to 
encounter  the   ominous   monster,   when    he   comes,   with 

*  H.  H.  Wilson,  '  Vishnupurana,*  pp.  78,  140 ;  Skr.  Die,  s.  v,  rUhu  ;  Sii 
W.  Jones  in  'As.  Res.'  vol.  iL  p.  290  ;  S.  Davis,  ibid.,  p.  258  ;  Pictet,  '  Oii- 
gines  Indo-Europ.,' part.  ii.  p.  584;  Roberts,  'Oriental  Illustrations,'  p.  7; 
Hardy,  '  Manual  of  Buddhism.' 

'  Castreu,  'Finn.  Myth.'  p.  63;  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asien,*vol.  11.  p.  844. 


I  i 


MYTHOLOGY. 


33:J 


and 

litis, 
adoo 
jusly 
with 
econ- 

they 
L    the 
stated 
i  may 
Dinical 

more 
nesting 
lowing 
i  of  an 
Asiatic 

■myth 

amour 

i)  from 

by   r>r- 
Rahu 

so  that 
them 
•h-East 
,vere  not 
lower  of 
o  do  the 
iicement 
oceed  to 
es,   with 

r&hu ;  Sit 
f>ictet,  '  On- 
ions,' p.  7  I 

p.  344. 


gongs  and  bells  and  the  regularly  appointed  prayers. 
Travellers  of  a  century  or  two  ago  relate  curious  details 
of  such  combined  belief  in  the  dragon  and  the  almanac, 
culminating  in  an  ingenious  argument  to  account  for  the 
accuracy  of  the  Europeans'  predictions.  These  clever 
people,  the  Siamese  said,  know  the  monster's  mealtimes, 
and  can  tell  how  hungry  he  will  be,  that  is,  how  large  an 
eclipse  will  be  required  to  satisfy  him.* 

In  Europe  popular  mythology  kept  up  ideas,  either  of  a 
fight  of  sun  or  moon  with  celestial  enemies,  or  of  the 
moon's  fainting  or  sickness ;  and  especially  remnants  of 
such  archaic  belief  are  manifested  in  the  tumultuous 
clamour  raised  in  defence  or  encouragement  of  the  alilicted 
luminaiy.  The  Romans  flung  firebrands  into  the  air,  and 
blew  trumpets,  and  clanged  brazen  pots  and  pans,  "  labor- 
anti  succurrere  lunse."  Tacitus,  relating  the  story  of  the 
soldiers'  mutiny  against  Tiberius,  tells  how  their  plan  was 
frustrated  bv  the  moon  suddenly  languishing  in  a  clear  skv 
(luiia  claro  repente  coelo  visa  languescere) :  in  vain  by  clang 
of  brass  and  blast  of  trumpet  tliey  strove  to  drive  away  the 
darkness,  for  clouds  came  up  and  covered  all,  and  the  plot- 
ters saw,  lamenting,  that  the  gods  turned  away  from  their 
crime.^  In  the  period  of  the  conversion  of  Europe,  Chris- 
tian teacliers  began  to  attack  the  pagan  superstition,  and 
to  urge  that  men  should  no  longer  clamour  and  cry  "  vince 
luna !  "  to  aid  the  moon  in  her  sore  danger ;  and  at  last 
there  came  a  time  when  the  picture  of  the  sun  or  moon  in 
the  dragon's  mouth  became  a  mere  old-fashioned  symbol  to 
represent  eclipses  in  the  calendar,  and  the  saying,  "  Dieu 
garde  la  lune  des  loups  "  passed  into  a  mocking  proverb 
against  fear  of  remote  danger.  Yet  the  ceremonial  chari^  ari 
is  mentioned  in  our  own  country  in  the  seventeenth  century  : 

»  Klemm,  '  C.  G.'  vol.  vi.  p.  449;  Doolittle,  'Chinese,'  vol.  i.  p.  308; 
Turpin,  Richard,  and  Borri  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  iv.  pp.  679,  725,  815  ;  Bastian, 
'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  ii.  p.  109  ;  vol.  iii.  p.  "242.  See  Eisenmenger,  'Entdecktea 
Judentiium,'  vol.  i.  p.  398  (Talmudic  myth). 

^  Plutarch,  de  Facie  in  Orbe  Lunae  ;  Juvenal,  Sat.  vi.  441 ;  Plin.  iL  9 ; 
Tacit.  Annal.  i.  28. 


1 


1    !«' 


i 


1 1  a. 


\u\ 


1  i   i  .' 


.)   ■■ 


I   f 


-I 


\  I 


■■m 


'f  :■  i 


/i.'.ii  i\ 


J  ti       "f  ''^"Ty"**" 


-^'  ,-L »  .mi  .'  ji  i>i':.»  ■ 


.i:'1' 


['  .  S>, 


I 


'      i 


•: 


M    I 


'  /: 


!         I 
/       1/ 


334 


MYTHOLOGY. 


"  The  Irish  or  Welsh  during  eclipses  run  about  beating 
kettles  and  pans,  thinking  their  clamour  and  vexations 
available  to  the  assistance  of  the  higher  orbes."  In  1654, 
Nuremberg  went  wild  with  terror  of  an  impending  solar 
eclipse ;  the  markets  ceased,  the  churches  were  crowded 
with  penitents,  and  a  record  of  the  event  remains  in  the 
printed  thanksgiving  which  was  issued  (i^anckgebeth  nach 
vcrgangener  hochstbedrohlich  und  hochscharllicher  Sonnen- 
finsternuss),  which  gives  thanks  to  the  Almighty  for  grant- 
ing to  poor  terrified  sinners  the  grace  of  covering  the  sky 
with  clouds,  and  sparing  them  the  sight  of  the  awful  sign  in 
heaven.  In  our  own  times,  a  writer  on  French  folklore  was 
surprised  during  a  lunar  eclipse  to  hear  sighs  and  exclama- 
tions, "  Mon  Dieu,  quelle  est  souffrante ! "  and  found  on 
inquiry  that  the  poor  moon  was  believed  to  be  the  prey  of 
some  invisible  monster  seeking  to  devour  her.^  No  doubt 
such  late  survivals  have  belonged  in  great  measure  to  the 
ignorant  crowd,  for  the  educated  classes  of  the  West  have 
never  suffered  in  its  extreme  the  fatal  Chinese  union  of 
scepticism  and  superstition.  Yet  if  it  is  our  mood  to  bewail 
the  slowness  with  which  knowledge  penetrates  the  mass  of 
mankind,  there  stand  dismal  proofs  before  us  here.  The 
eclipse  remained  an  omen  of  fear  almost  up  to  our  own 
century,  and  could  rout  a  horror-stricken  army,  and  fill 
Europe  with  dismaj',  a  thousand  years  after  Pliny  had 
written  in  memorable  words  his  eulogy  of  the  astronomers ; 
those  great  men,  he  said,  and  above  ordinary  mortals,  v/ho, 
by  discovering  the  laws  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  had  freed  the 
miserable  mind  of  men  from  terror  at  the  portents  of  eclipses. 
Day  is  daily  swallowed  up  by  Night,  to  be  set  free  again 
at  dawn,  and  from  time  to  time  sutlers  a  like  but  shorter 
durance  in  the  maw  of  the  Eclipse  and  the  Storm-cloud ; 


»  Grimm,  'D.  M.'  668-78,  224  ;  Hanusch,  'Slav.  Myth.'  p.  268  ;  Brand, 
'Pop.  Ant.'  vol.  iii.  p.  152  ;  Horst,  'Zaiiber  Bibliothek,'  vol.  iv.  p.  350;  D, 
Monnier,  'Traditions  po]iulaires  comparfies,'  p,  138;  see  Migne,  'Die.  dei 
Superstitions,*  art.  'Eclipse;'  Cornelius  Agrippa,  'De  Occulta  Philosophia,' 
ii.  c.  45,  gives  a  picture  of  the  lunar  eclipse-dragon. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


lathig 

itions 

1654, 
3olar 

jwded 

n  the 

L  nach 

miien- 

grant- 

le  sky 

sign  in 

ire  was 

clama- 

ind  on 

prey  of 

)  doubt 
to  the 

st  have 

nion  of 

)  bewail 

oaass  of 
The 
ur  own 
and  fiU 
ny  had 
lomers ; 
s,  v;ho, 
eed  the 
clipses. 
again 
shorter 
-cloud ; 


18  ;  Brand, 
350 ;  D. 
'Die.  del 
lilosophia,' 


36 


Summer  is  overcome  and  prisoned  by  dark  Winter,  to  b^ 
again  set  free.  It  is  a  plausible  opinion  that  such  scenes 
from  the  great  nature-drama  of  the  conflict  of  light  and 
darkness  are,  generally  speaking,  the  simple  facts,  which  in 
many  lands  and  ages  have  been  told  in  mythic  shape,  as 
legends  of  a  Hero  or  Maiden  devoured  by  a  Monster,  and 
hacked  out  again  or  disgorged.  The  myths  just  displayed 
show  with  absolute  distinctness,  that  myth  can  describe 
eclipse  as  the  devouring  and  setting  free  of  the  personal  sun 
and  moon  by  a  monster.  The  following  Maori  legend  will 
supply  proof  as  positive  that  the  episode  of  the  Sun's  or  the 
Day's  death  in  sunset  may  be  dramatized  into  a  tale  of  a 
personal  solar  hero  plunging  into  the  body  of  the  personal 
Night. 

Maui,  the  New  Zealand  cosmic  hero,  at  the  end  of  his 
glorious  career  came  back  to  his  fatlier's  country,  and  was 
told  that  here,  perhaps,  he  might  be  overcome,  for  here 
dwelt  his  mighty  ancestress,  Fine-nui-te-po,  Great-Woman- 
Night,  whom  **  you  may  see  flashing,  and  as  it  were  opening 
and  shutting  there,  where  the  horizon  meets  the  sky ;  what 
you  see  yonder  shining  so  brightly-red,  are  her  eyes,  and 
her  teeth  are  as  sharp  and  hard  as  pieces  of  volcanic  glass ; 
her  body  is  like  that  of  a  man  ;  and  as  for  the  pupils  of  her 
eyes,  they  are  jasper;  and  her  hair  is  like  the  tangles 
of  long  sea-weed,  and  her  mouth  is  like  that  of  a  barra- 
couta."  Maui  boasted  of  his  former  exploits,  and  said, 
"  Let  us  fearlessly  seek  whether  men  are  to  die  or  live  for 
ever ;  "  but  his  father  called  to  mind  an  evil  omen,  that 
when  he  was  baptizing  Maui  he  had  left  out  part  of  xhe  fit- 
ting prayers,  and  therefore  he  knew  that  his  son  must 
perish.  Yet  he  said,  *'  0,  my  last-born,  and  the  strength 
of  my  old  age,  ...  be  bold,  go  and  visit  your  great 
ancestress,  who  flashes  so  fiercely  there  where  the  edge  of 
the  horizon  meets  the  sky."  Then  the  birds  came  to  Maui 
to  be  his  companions  in  the  enterprise,  and  it  was  evening 
when  they  went  with  him,  and  they  came  to  the  dwelling  ol 
Hine-nui-te-po,  and  found  her  fast  asleep.     Maui  charged 


I  I 


.  I 


•  M 


A] 


I  ■  I 


n ' 


{, 


>ti 


iii 


;j36 


MYTHOLOGY. 


the  birds  not  to  langh  when  they  saw  him  creep  into  tlie  old 
chieftainess,  but  when  he  had  got  altogether  inside  her,  and 
was  coming  out  of  her  mouth,  then  they  might  laugh  long 
and  loud.  So  Maui  stripped  off  his  clothes,  and  the  skin 
on  his  hips,  tattooed  by  the  chisel  of  Uetonga,  looked 
mottled  and  beautiful,  like  a  mackerel's,  as  he  crept  in. 
The  birds  kept  silence,  but  when  he  was  in  up  to  his  waist, 
the  little  tiwakawaka  could  hold  its  laughter  in  no  longer, 
and  burst  out  loud  with  its  merry  note  ;  then  Maui's  ances- 
tress awoke,  closed  on  him  and  caught  him  tight,  and  he 
was  killed.  Thus  died  Maui,  and  thus  death  came  into  the 
world,  for  Hine-nui-te-po  is  the  goddess  both  of  night  and 
death,  and  had  Maui  entered  into  her  body  and  passed 
safely  through  her,  men  would  have  died  no  more.  The 
New  Zealanders  hold  that  the  Sun  descends  at  night  into 
his  cavern,  bathes  in  the  Wai  Ora  Tane,  the  Water  of  Life, 
and  returns  at  dawn  from  the  under-world  ;  hence  we  may 
interpret  their  thought  that  if  Man  could  likewise  descend 
into  Hades  and  return,  his  race  would  be  immortal.^  It  is 
seldom  that  solar  characteristics  are  more  distinctly  marked 
in  the  several  details  of  a  myth  than  they  are  here.  Iliue-nui- 
te-po.  Great- Woman-Night,  who  dwells  on  the  horizon,  is 
the  New  Zealand  Hades,  or  goddess  of  Hades.  The  birds 
are  to  keep  silence  as  the  Sun  enters  the  Night,  but  may  sing 
when  he  comes  forth  from  her  mouth,  the  mouth  of  Hades. 
Lastly,  I  have  been  able  to  use  an  unexceptionable  means  of 
testing  whether  the  legend  is  or  is  not  a  real  sun-myth.  If 
it  is  so,  then  the  tiivak  ncaka  (also  called  the  piwakaicaka) 
ought  to  be  a  bird  that  sings  at  sunset.     I  have  had  inquuy 

*  Grey,  'Polyn.  Myth.  '  p.  54 — 58  ;  in  his  editions  of  the  Maori  text,  Ko 
nga  Mahinga,  pp.  28-30,  Ko  iiga  Mateatea,  pp.  xlviii-ix.  I  have  to  tliank 
Sir  G.  Grey  tor  a  more  explicit  aiul  uiytholof^ically  iiiore  cousisteut  transla- 
tion of  the  story  of  Maui's  entrance  into  the  womb  of  Hine-nui-te-po  and  her 
crashing  liini  to  death  between  her  tlii.i^hs,  than  is  given  in  his  English  ver- 
sion. Compare  K.  Taylor,  *  New  Zealand,'  p.  132;  Schirren,  *  Wandursagen 
der  Neuseel.'  p.  33  ;  Shortland,  'Trads.  of  N.  Z.'  p.  63  (a  curious  version  of 
the  myth  of  Maui's  death) ;  see  also  pp.  171,  180,  and  Baker  in  '  Tr.  Etk 
Soc'  vol.  L  p.  63. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


"•IT 


e  old 

,  and 
long 

;  skin 

ooked 

pt  in. 

waist, 

onger, 

ances- 

,nd  he 

ito  the 

lit  and 

passed 

.     The 

ht  into 

of  Life, 

Ne  may 

descend 

I     It  is 

niiii-ked 

iue-nui- 
izon,  is 
birds 
lay  sing 
Hades, 
leans  of 
yth.     If 
katcaka) 
inquu-y 

[•i  text,  Ko 
to  thank 
it  transla- 
Ipo  and  her 
lii<;Ush  ver- 
luidursiigen 
1  version  ol 
•  Tr.  Etk 


made  in  New  Zealand  to  ascertain  whether  this  is  the  case, 
and  have  thus  obtained  a  perfect  confh'mation  ot  niy  iiittu'- 
pretation  of  the  legend  of  tlie  death  of  ^laui,  as  being  a 
nature-myth  of  the  setting  sun ;  the  reply  is  that  tliii 
name  "  describes  the  cry  of  the  bird,  which  is  only  heard 
at  sunset." 

In  the  list  of  myths  of  engulphing  monsters,  there  are 
others  which  seem  to  display,  with  a  clearness  almost  ap- 
proaching this,  an  origin  suggested  by  the  familiar  spectacle 
of  Day  and  Night,  or  Light  and  Darkness.  The  simple 
story  of  the  Day  may  well  be  told  in  the  Karen  tale  of  Ta 
Ywa,  who  was  born  a  tiny  child,  and  went  to  the  Sun  to 
make  him  grow ;  the  Sun  tried  in  vain  to  destroy  him  by 
rain  and  heat,  and  then  blew  him  up  large  till  his  head 
touched  the  sky  ;  then  he  went  forth  and  travelled  from  his 
home  far  over  the  earth ;  and  among  the  adventures  which 
befel  him  was  this — a  snake  swallowed  him,  but  they  ripped 
the  creature  up,  and  Tu  Ywa  came  back  to  life,^  like  the 
Sun  from  the  ripped  up  serpent-demon  in  the  Buddhist 
eclipse-myth.  In  North  American  Indian  mythology,  a 
principal  personage  is  Manabozho,  an  Algonquin  hero  or 
deity  whose  solar  character  is  well  brought  into  view  in  an 
Ottawa  myth  which  tells  us  that  Manabozho  (whom  it  calls 
Na-na-bou-jou)  is  the  elder  brother  of  Niug-gah-be-ar-nong 
Manito,  the  Spirit  of  the  West,  god  of  the  country  of  the 
dead  in  the  region  of  the  setting  sun.  Manabozho's  solar 
nature  is  again  revealed  in  the  story  of  his  driving  the  W>  st, 
his  father,  across  mountain  aiul  lake  to  the  brink  of  tlie 
world,  though  he  cannot  kill  him.  This  sun-hero  Man^» 
bozho,  when  he  angled  for  the  King  of  Fishes,  was  swii- 
lowed,  canoe  and  all ;  then  he  smote  the  monster's  heart 
with  his  war-club  till  he  would  fain  have  cast  hiin  up  into 
ihe  lake  again,  but  the  hero  set  his  canoe  fast  across  the 
fish's  throat  inside,  and  finished  slaying  him;  when  the 
dead  monster  drifted  ashore,  the  gulls  pecked  an  opening 
for  Manabozho  to  come  out.     This  is  a  story  famihar  to 

'  Mason,  Karens  in  'Joura.  As.  Sue.  Bengal'  1865,  part  ii.  p.  178,  etc. 
VOL.  I.  z 


ii     '     .( 


338 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Hi: 


'd; 


;/ 


f'  Villi 


n 


ill 


'T     ! 


M 


;!i 


:,l      .     ) 


I  I 


English  readers  from  its  introduction  into  the  poem  ol 
Hiawatha.  In  another  version,  the  tale  is  told  of  the  Little 
]\roncdo  of  the  Ojibwas,  who  also  corresponds  with  the  New 
Zealand  Maui  in  being  the  Sun-Catcher ;  among  his  various 
prodigies,  he  is  swallowed  by  the  great  fish,  and  cut  out 
again  by  his  sister.^  South  Africa  is  a  region  where  there 
prevail  myths  which  seem  to  tell  the  story  of  the  world  im- 
prisoned in  the  monster  Night,  and  delivered  by  the  dawn- 
ing Sun.  The  Basutos  have  their  myth  of  the  hero  liitao- 
lane ;  he  came  to  man's  stature  and  wisdom  at  his  birth ; 
all  mankind  save  his  mother  and  he  had  been  devoured  by 
a  monster;  he  attacked  the  creature  and  was  swallowed 
whole,  but  cutting  his  wny  out  he  set  free  all  the  inhabitants 
of  the  world.  The  Zulus  tell  stories  as  pointedly  suggestive. 
A  mother  follows  her  children  into  the  maw  of  the  great 
elephant,  and  finds  forests  and  rivers  and  highlands,  and 
dogs  and  cattle,  and  people  who  had  built  their  villages 
there ;  a  description  which  is  simply  that  of  the  Zulu 
Hades.  When  the  Princess  Untombinde  was  carried  off  by 
the  Isikqukqumadevu,  the  **  bloated,  squatting,  bearded 
monster,"  the  King  gathered  his  army  and  attacked  it,  but  it 
swallowed  up  men,  and  dogs,  and  cattle,  all  but  one  warrior ; 
he  slew  the  monster,  and  there  came  out  cattle,  and  horses, 
and  men,  and  last  of  all  the  princess  herself.  The  stories 
of  these  monsters  being  cut  open  imitate,  in  graphic  savage 
fashion,  the  cries  of  the  imprisoned  creatures  as  they  came 
back  from  darkness  into  daylight.  "  There  came  out  first 
a  fowl,  it  said,  '  Kukuluku !  I  see  the  world ! '  For,  for  a 
long  time  it  had  been  without  seeing  it.  After  the  fowl 
there  came  out  a  man,  he  said  '  Hau  !  I  at  length  see  the 
world !  '"  and  so  on  with  the  rest.' 

•  Schoolcraft,  '  Indian  Triliea,'  part  iii.  p.  818  ;  *  Algic  Res.'  vol.  i.  p.  135, 
etc.,  144  ;  John  Tanner,  *  Narrative,'  p.  357  ;  see  Briiiton,  '  Myths  of  New 
World,'  p.  166.  For  legends  of  Sun-Catcher,  see  '  Early  History  of  Mankind,' 
eh.  xii. 

'^  Casalis,  '  Basntos,'  p.  347  ;  Callaway,  'Zulu  Talcs,'  vol.  i.  pp.  66,  69,  84, 
334  sue  also  the  story,  p.  241,  of  the  frog  who  swallowed  the  princess  and 
carried  her  safe  home).     See  Cranz,  p.  271  (Greenland  angekok  swallowed  bj 


MYTHOLOGY. 


339 


The  well-known  modern  interpretation  of  the  myth  of 
Perseus  and  Andromeda,  or  of  Herakles  and  Hesione,  as  a 
description  of  the  Sun  slaying  the  Darkness,  has  its  con- 
nexion with  this  group  of  legends.  It  is  related  in  a 
remarkable  version  of  this  story,  that  when  the  Trojan 
King  Laomedon  had  bound  his  daugliter  Hesione  to  the 
rock,  a  sacrifice  to  Poseidon's  destroying  sea-monster, 
Heraldes  delivered  the  maiden,  springing  full-armed  into 
the  fish's  gaping  throat,  and  coming  forth  hairless  after 
three  days  hacking  within.  This  singular  story,  probably 
in  part  of  Semitic  origin,  combines  the  ordinary  myth  of 
Hesione  or  Andromeda  with  the  story  of  Jonah's  fish,  for 
which  indeed  the  Greek  sculpture  of  Andromeda's  monster 
served  as  the  model  in  early  Christian  art,  while  Joppa  was 
the  place  where  vestiges  of  Andromeda's  chains  on  a  rock  in 
front  of  the  town  were  exhibited  in  Pliny's  time,  and  whence 
the  bones  of  a  whale  were  carried  to  Rome  as  relics  of 
Andromeda's  monster.  To  recognize  the  place  -wbich  the 
nature-myth  of  the  Man  swallowed  by  the  Monster  occupies 
in  mythology,  among  remote  and  savage  races  and  onward 
among  the  higher  nations,  affects  the  argument  on  a  point 
of  Biblical  criticism.  It  stiengthens  the  position  of  the 
critics  who,  seeing  that  the  Book  of  Jonah  consists  of  two 
wonder-episodes  adapted  to  enforce  two  great  religious 
lessons,  no  longer  suppose  intention  of  literal  narrative  in 
what  they  may  fairly  consider  as  the  most  elaborate  parable 
of  the  Old  Testament.  Had  the  Book  of  Jonah  happened 
to  be  lost  in  old  times,  and  only  recently  recovered,  it  is 
indeed  hardly  likely  that  any  other  opinion  of  it  than  this 
would  find  acceptance  among  scholars.^ 


'   »■    <  :  i 


b"3ai  ttiid  walrus  and  thrown  up  again),  and  Bastian,  '  Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  pp. 
606-7  ;  J.  M.  Harris  in  '  Mem.  Anthrop.  Soc,'  vol.  ii.  p.  31  (similar  notions 
in  Airioa  and  New  Guiiu'u). 

'  Tzetzes  ap.  Lycophron,  Cassandra,  33.  As  to  connexion  with  Joppa  and 
rhoenicia,  see  Plin.  v.  14  ;  ix.  4  ;  Mela,  i.  11 ;  Strabo,  xvi.  2,  28  ;  Movers, 
Phonizier,  vol.  i.  pp.  422-3.  The  expression  in  Jonah,  ii.  2,  "out  of  the 
belly  of  Hades "  (inibten  sheol,  tx  KoiAi'as  $5uu)  seems  a  relio  of  the  original 
hieauiiig  of  the  myth. 

z  2 


! 


E 


(    f 


340 


MYTHOLOGY. 


1: 


'(•'::(. 


The  conception  of  Hades  as  a  monster  swallowmj:^  men  in 
death,  v.  is  actually  fiimiliar  to  Christian  thought.  Thus,  to 
take  instances  from  different  periods,  the  account  of  the 
Descent  into  Hades  in  the  Apocryphal  Gospel  of  Nicodemua 
makes  Hades  speak  in  his  proper  personality,  complaining 
that  his  belly  is  in  pain,  when  the  Saviour  is  to  descend  and 
set  free  the  saints  imprisoned  in  it  from  the  beginning  of 
the  world  ;  and  in  mediseval  representations  of  this  deliver- 
ance, the  so-called  "Harrowing  of  Hell,"  Christ  is  depicted 
standing  before  a  huge  fish-like  monster's  open  jaws,  whence 
Adam  and  Eve  are  coming  forth  first  of  mankind.^  With 
even  more  distinctness  of  mythical  meaning,  the  man- 
devouring  monster  is  introduced  in  the  Scandinavian  Eireks- 
Saga.  Eirek,  journeying  toward  Paradise,  comes  to  a  stone 
bridge  guarded  by  a  dragon,  and  entering  into  its  maw, 
finds  that  he  has  arrived  in  the  world  of  bliss.^  But  in 
another  wonder-tale,  belonging  to  that  legendary  growth 
w-hich  formed  round  early  Christian  history,  no  such  dis- 
tinguishable remnant  of  nature-myth  survives.  St.  Margaret, 
daughter  of  a  priest  of  Antioch,  had  been  cast  into  a 
dungeon,  and  there  Satan  came  upon  her  in  the  form  of  a 
dragon,  and  swallowed  her  alive  : 

*'  Maiden  Morgreto  tho  Lokeil  her  beside, 
And  sees  a  loathly  dragon,  Out  of  an  hirn  glide  ; 
His  ej-eu  were  full  griesly,  His  mouth  opened  wide, 
And  Margrete  might  no  where  fleo  There  she  must  abide, 
Maiden  Margrete  Stood  still  as  any  stone, 
And  that  loathly  worm,  To  her- ward  gan  gone 
Took  her  in  his  foul  mouth,  And  swallowed  her  flesh  and  bone. 
Anou  he  braat — Damage  hath  she  none  ! 
Maiden  Mergrete  Upon  the  dragon  stuod  ; 
Blyth  was  her  harte,  And  joyful  was  her  mood.'*' 

Stories  beloLging  to  the  same  group  are  not  unknown  to 

'  'Apoc.  Go8p.'  Nicodemus,  ch.  xx. ;  Mrs,  Jameson,  *  History  of  our  Lord 
in  i^rt,'  vol.  ii.  p.  '258. 

*  Eireks  Snga,  3,  4,  in  '  Flateyjarbok,'  vol.  i.,  Christiania,  1859  ;  Baring- 
Gould,  '  Myths  of  the  Middle  Ages,'  p.  238. 

•  Mrs.  Jameson,  '  Sacred  and  JiCgcntiary  Art,'  vol.  ii.  p.  13<». 


^•>. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


341 


nen  m 
bus,  to 
of  the 
idemua 
laining 
nd  and 
ning  of 
leliver- 
epicted 
whence 
With 
le  man- 
Eireks- 
)  a  stone 
s    maw, 
But  in 
'  growth 
uch  dis- 
[[argaret, 
t  into   a 
brm  of  a 


le. 


id  bone. 


tnown  to 
}f  our  Lord 
^9  ;  Baring- 


European  folklore.  One  is  the  -tory  of  Little  Red  Biding 
Hood,  mutilated  in  the  English  p'ixsery  version,  but  known 
more  perfectl}^  by  old  wives  in  Germany,  who  can  tell  that 
the  lovely  little  maid  in  her  shining  red  satin  cloak  was 
swallowed  with  her  grandmother  by  the  Wolf,  but  they  both 
came  out  safe  and  sound  when  the  hunter  cut  open  the  sleep- 
ing beast.  Any  one  who  can  fancy  with  Prince  Hal,  "  the 
blessed  sun  himself  a  fair  hot  wench  in  flame-coloured 
talfeta,"  and  can  then  imagine  her  swallowed  up  by  Skoll, 
the  Sun-devouring  Wolf  of  Scandinavian  mythology,  may 
be  inclined  to  class  the  tale  of  Little  Bed  Bidingliood  as  a 
myth  of  sunset  and  sunrise.  There  is  indeed  another  story 
in  Grimm's  Mtirchen,  partly  the  same  as  this  one,  which  we 
can  hardly  doubt  to  have  a  quaint  touch  of  sun-myth  in  it. 
It  is  called  the  Wolf  and  Seven  Kids,  and  tells  of  the  wolf 
swallowing  the  kids  all  but  the  youngest  of  the  seven,  who 
was  hidden  in  the  clock-case.  As  in  Little  Red  Biding- 
hood  they  cut  open  the  wolf  and  fill  him  with  stones.  This 
tale,  which  took  its  present  shape  since  the  invention  of 
clocks,  looks  as  though  the  tale-teller  was  thinking,  not  of 
real  kids  and  wolf,  but  of  days  of  the  week  swallowed  by 
night,  or  how  should  he  have  hit  upon  such  a  fancy  as  that 
the  wolf  could  not  get  at  the  youngest  of  the  seven  kids, 
because  it  was  hidden  (like  to-day)  in  the  clock-case  ?  ^ 

It  may  be  worth  while  to  raise  the  question  apropos  of 
this  nursery  tale,  does  the  peasant  folklore  of  modern 
Europe  really  still  display  episodes  of  nature-myth,  not  as 

•  J.  and  \V.  Grimm,  '  Kinder  und  Hausmarchen,  vol.  i.  pp.  26, 140  ;  vol.  iii. 
p.  15.  [See  ref.  to  these  two  stories,  '  Early  Hist,  of  M.'  1st  ed.  (\i^G5)  p  338. 
I  find  that  Mr.  G.  W,  Cox,  '  Mythology '  (1870),  vol.  i.  p.  358,  had  noticed  the 
Wolf  and  Seven  Kids  as  a  myth  of  the  days  of  tlie  week  (Note  to  2iid  oil.)  J. 
For  mentions  of  the  wolf  of  darknes.s,  see  Max  Miillcr,  'Lectures,'  2nd  series, 
p.  506,  see  379,  '  Chijis,  etc.,' vol.  ii.  p.  103;  Hi;misch,  p.  192;  Edda,  GylCa- 
ginning,  12  ;  Grinun,  '  D.  M.'  pp.  224,  668.  With  the  episode  of  tiie  stones 
substituted,  comimre  the  myth  of  Zeus  and  Kronos.  For  various  other  stories 
belonging  to  the  group  of  the  Man  swallowed  by  the  Monster,  see  Hardy, 
'Manual  of  Buddhism,'  p.  501  ;  Lane,  'Thousand  and  One  Nights,'  vol.  iii. 
p.  104  ;  Halliwell,  '  Pop.  Rhymes,'  p.  98  ;  '  Nursery  Rhymes,'  p.  48  ;  *  Early 
Hist,  of  Mankind, 'p.  337. 


n 


Ji 


i 

ilj 


342 


MYTHOLOGY. 


.  ir 


ii'>i 


:  y 


t\ 


mere  broken-down  and  senseless  frngnients,  but  in  full  shape 
and  significance  ?  In  answer  it  will  be  enough  to  quote  the 
story  of  Vasilissa  the  Beautiful,  brought  forward  by  Mr.  W. 
Ralston  in  a  recent  lecture  on  Russian  Folklore.  Vasilissa's 
stepmother  and  two  sisters,  plotting  against  her  life,  send 
her  to  get  a  light  at  the  house  of  Baba  Yaga,  the  witch,  and 
her  journey  contains  the  following  history  of  the  Day,  told  in 
truest  mythic  fashion.  Vasilissa  goes  and  wanders,  wanders 
in  the  forest.  She  goes,  and  she  shudders.  Suddenly  before 
her  bounds  a  rider,  he  himself  white,  and  clad  in  white,  the 
horse  under  him  white,  and  the  trappings  white.  And  day 
began  to  dawn.  She  goes  farther,  when  a  second  rider  bounds 
forth,  himself  red,  clad  in  red,  and  on  a  red  horse.  The  sun 
began  to  rise.  She  goes  on  all  day,  and  towards  evening 
arrives  at  the  witch's  house.  Suddenly  there  comes  again  a 
rider,  himself  black,  clad  in  all  black,  and  on  a  black  horse ; 
he  bounded  to  the  gates  of  the  Baba  Yaga  and  disappeared  as 
if  he  had  sunk  through  the  earth.  Night  fell.  After  this, 
when  Vasilissa  asks  the  witch,  who  was  the  white  rider,  she 
answered,  "  That  is  my  clear  Day;  "  who  was  the  red  rider, 
"  That  is  my  red  Sun ;"  who  was  the  black  rider,  "  That  is 
my  black  Night ;  they  are  all  my  trusty  friends."  Now, 
considering  that  the  story  of  Little  Bed  Eidinghood  belongs 
to  the  same  class  of  folklore  tales  as  this  story  of  Vasilissa 
the  Beautiful,  we  need  not  be  afraid  to  seek  in  the  one  for 
traces  of  the  same  archaic  type  of  nature-myth  which  the 
other  not  only  keeps  up,  but  keeps  up  with  the  fullest 
consciousness  of  meaning. 

The  development  of  nature-myth  into  heroic  legend  seems 
to  have  taken  place  among  the  savage  tribes  of  the  South 
Sea  Islands  and  North  America  nmch  as  it  took  place  among 
the  ancestors  of  the  classic  nations  of  the  Old  World.  We 
are  not  to  expect  accurate  consistency  or  proper  sequence  of 
episodes  in  the  heroic  cycles,  but  to  judge  from  the  charac- 
teristics of  the  episodes  themselves  as  to  the  ideas  which 
suggested  them.  As  regards  the  less  cultured  races,  a 
glance  at  two  legendary  cycles,  one  from  Polynesia  and  the 


"f^mm  «r.<K.^  f 


AW 


MYTHOLOGY. 


343 


tape 

tlie 
,  W. 

isa's 

send 

,  and 

)ld  in 

iders 

lefore 

3,  the 

d  day 

ounds 

le  sun 

waning 

.rfain  a 

horse ; 

ared  as 

3r  this, 

er,  she 
rider, 

That  is 
Now, 
3elongs 
asihssa 
one  for 
ich  the 
fullest 

Id  seems 
South 
among 

|d.     We 

luence  of 

charac- 

is  which 

Iraces,  a 
and  the 


other  from  North  America,  will  serve  to  give  an  idea  of  the 
varieties  of  treatment  of  phases  of  sun-myth.  The  New 
Zealand  myth  of  Maui,  mixed  as  it  may  be  with  other 
fancies,  is  in  its  most  striking  features  the  story  of  Day  and 
Night.  The  L-tory  of  the  Sun's  birth  from  the  ocean  is  thus 
told.  There  \s' 're  five  brothers,  all  called  Maui,  and  it  was 
the  youngest  Maui  v/ho  had  been  thrown  into  the  sea  by 
Taranga  his  mother,  and  rescued  by  his  ancestor  Tama- 
nui-ki-te-Rangi,  Great- Man-in-Heaven,  who  took  him  to  his 
house,  and  hung  him  in  the  roof.  Then  is  given  in  fanciful 
personality  the  tale  of  the  vanishing  of  Niglic  at  dawn.  One 
night,  when  Taranga  came  home,  she  found  little  Maui  with 
his  brothers,  and  when  she  knew  her  last  born,  the  child  of 
her  old  age,  she  took  him  to  sleep  with  her,  as  she  had  been 
used  to  take  the  other  Mauis  his  brothers,  before  they  were 
grown  up.  But  the  little  Maui  grew  vexed  and  suspicious, 
when  he  found  that  every  morning  his  mother  rose  at  dawn 
and  disappeared  from  the  house  in  a  moment,  not  to  return 
till  nightfall.  So  one  night  he  crept  out  and  stopped  every 
crevice  in  the  wooden  window  and  the  doorway,  that  the  day 
might  not  shine  into  the  house  ;  then  broke  the  faint  light 
of  early  dawn,  and  then  the  sun  rose  and  mounted  into  the 
heavens,  but  Taranga  slept  on,  for  she  knew  not  it  was  broad 
day  outside.  At  last  she  sprang  n\},  pulled  oat  the  stopping 
of  the  chinks,  and  fled  in  dismay.  Then  Maui  saw  her 
plunge  into  a  hole  in  the  ground  and  disappear,  and  thus  he 
found  the  deep  cavern  by  which  his  mother  went  down  below 
the  earth  as  each  night  departed.  After  this,  follows  the 
episode  of  Maui's  visit  to  his  ancestress  Muri-ranga-wheiiusi , 
at  that  western  Land's  End  where  Maori  souls  descend  into 
the  subterranean  region  of  the  dead.  She  sniiFs  as  he  comes 
towards  her,  and  distends  herself  to  devour  hira,  but  when 
she  has  snifted  round  from  south  by  east  to  north,  she  smells 
his  coming  by  the  western  breeze,  and  so  knows  that  he  is 
a  descendant  of  hers.  He  asks  for  her  wondrous  jawbone, 
she  gives  it  to  him,  and  it  is  his  weapon  in  his  next  exploit 
when  he  catches  the  sun,  Tama-nui-te-Ra,  Great-Man-Sun, 


il" 

..i 


'.: 


">- 


t'  i 


.  f' 


344 


MYTHOLOGY. 


f    I'  , 


•  I 


Ml 


m,    :iJi 


T til-!  I 


in  the  noose,  and  wounds  him  and  makes  him  go  slowlv. 
With  a  fishhook  pointed  with  the  miraculons  jawbone,  and 
smeared  with  his  own  blood  for  bait,  Maui  next  performs  his 
most  famous  feat  of  fishing  up  New  Zealand,  still  called  Te- 
Ika-a-Maui,  the  fish  of  Maui.  To  understand  this,  we  must 
compare  the  various  versions  of  the  story  in  these  and  other 
Pacific  Islands,  which  show  that  it  is  a  general  myth  of  the 
mising  of  dry  land  from  beneath  the  ocean.  It  is  said 
elsewhere  that  it  was  Maui's  grandfather,  Rangi-Wenua, 
Heaven-Earth,  who  gave  the  jawbone.  More  distinctly,  it 
is  also  said  that  Maui  had  two  sons,  whom  he  slew  when 
3'oung  to  take  their  jawbones ;  now  these  two  sons  must  be 
the  Morning  and  Evening,  for  Maui  made  the  morning  and 
■evening  stars  from  an  eye  of  each  ;  and  it  was  with  the  jaw- 
bone of  the  eldest  that  he  drew  up  the  land  from  the  deep. 
Thus  the  bringing  up  of  the  land  from  the  ocean  by  the 
blood-stained  jawbone  of  the  morning  seems  to  be  a  myth  of 
the  dawn.  The  metaphor  of  the  jawbone  of  morning, 
somewhat  far-fetched  as  it  may  seem,  re-appears  in  the  Rig- 
Veda,  if  Professor  IMax  Miiller's  interpretation  of  Surameya 
as  the  Dawn  will  hold  good  in  this  passage  :  **  When  thou, 
bright  Sarameya,  openest  thy  teeth,  0  red  one,  spears  seem 
to  glitter  on  thy  jaws  as  thou  swallowest.  Sleep,  sleep."  * 
Another  Maori  legend  tells  how  Maui  takes  fire  in  his 
hands,  it  burns  him,  and  he  springs  with  it  into  the  lea : 
*'  When  he  sank  in  the  waters,  the  sun  for  the  first  time 
set,  and  darkness  covered  the  earth.  When  he  found  that 
all  was  night,  he  immediately  pursued  the  sun,  and  brought 
liim  back  in  the  morning."  When  Maui  carried  or  flung  the 
fire  into  the  sea,  he  set  a  volcano  burning.  It  is  told,  again, 
that  when  Maui  had  put  out  all  fires  on  earth,  his  mother 
sent  him  to  get  new  fire  from  her  ancestress  Mahuika.  The 
Tongans,  in  their  version  of  the  myth,  relate  how  the 
youngest  Maui  discovers  the  cavern  that  leads  to  Bulotu, 
the  west-land  of  the  dead,  and  how  his  father,  another 
Maui,  sends  him  to  the  yet  older  Maui  who  sits  by  his  great 
'  Rig-Veda,  vii.  64 ;  Max  Mliller,  'Lectures,'  2nd  eei   p.  473. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


34: 


wlv. 
and 
shia 
Te- 
must 
other 
,f  the 
\  said 
enua, 

5tly,  it 
r  when 
lUst  be 
iig  and 
he  jaw- 
e  deep, 
by  the 
myth  of 
aornin^, 

the  Rig- 
uvivmeya 

en  thou, 
lars  seem 
sleep, 
•e  in  his 
the  ^ea: 
trst  time 
,und  that 
brought 
flung  the 
Ad,  again, 
lis  mother 
Lka.     The 
how  the 
,0  Bulotu, 
another 
,yhis  great 
473. 


fire  ;  the  two  wrestle,  and  Maui  brings  away  fire  for  men, 
leaving  the  old  earthquake -god  lying  crippled  below.  The 
legendary  group  thus  draniiitizes  the  birth  of  the  sun  from 
the  ocean  and  the  departure  of  the  night,  the  extinction  of 
the  light  at  sunset  and  its  return  at  dawn,  and  the  descent 
of  the  sun  to  the  western  Hudes,  the  under-world  of  night 
and  death,  which  is  incidentally  identified  with  the  region  of 
subterranean  fire  and  earthquake.  Here,  indeed,  the 
characteristics  of  true  nature-myth  are  not  indistinctly 
marked,  and  Maui's  death  by  his  ancestress  the  Xiglit  fitly 
ends  his  solar  career.^ 

It  is  a  sunset-story,  very  differently  conceived,  that 
begins  the  beautiful  North  American  Indian  myth  of  the 
lied  Swan.  The  story  belongs  to  the  Algonquin  race. 
The  hunter  Ojibwa  had  just  killed  a  bear  and  begun  to 
skin  him,  when  suddenly  something  red  tinged  all  the  air 
around.  Reaching  the  shore  of  a  lake,  the  Indian  saw  it 
was  a  beautiful  red  swan,  whose  plumage  glittered  in  the 
sun.  In  vain  the  hunter  shot  his  shafts,  for  the  bird 
floated  unharmed  and  unheeding,  but  at  last  he  remembered 
three  magic  arrows  at  home,  which  had  been  his  father's. 
The  first  and  second  arrow  flew  near  and  nearer,  the  third 
struck  the  swan,  and  flapping  its  wings,  it  flew  ofl"  slowly 
towards  the  sinking  of  the  sun.  With  full  sense  of  the 
poetic  solar  meaning  of  this  episode,  Longfellow  has  adapted 
it  as  a  sunset  picture,  in  one  of  his  Indian  poems : 

"  Cau  it  be  the  sim  descending 
O'er  the  level  plain  of  water  ? 
Or  the  lied  Swan  floating,  flying, 
Wounded  by  the  magic  arrow, 

'  Grey,  '  Polyn.  Myth."  p.  16,  etc.,  see  144.  Other  details  in  Schirren, 
' "Waridersagen  der  Ni  useeJander,' pp.  32-7,  143-51;  R.  Taylor,  'New  Zea- 
land,' p.  124,  etc.  ;  compare  116,  141,  etc.,  and  voloano-myth,  p.  248  ;  Yate, 
'  New  Zealand,'  p.  142  ;  Poliick,  'M.  and  C.  of  New.  Z  '  vol.  i.  p.  15  ;  S.  S. 
Farmer,  •Tonf,'a  Is.'  p.  134.  See  also  Turner,  *  Tolyiiesia,'  pp.  2.'<2,  527 
(Sanioan  version).  In  eoiiiprtring  the  f^roup  of  Maui-legends  it  is  to  be  ob' 
eerved  that  New  Zealand  Maliuika  and  Maui-Tikitiki  correspond  to  Tongan 
Mafuike  and  Kijikiji,  Saiiioaa  Mafuie  and  Tiitii. 


I 


'I 


;.n 


•ir 


!    1.1/ 


fill' I 


^■r-;r^i 


I!  ! ' 


!     li 


iJ.  1 


346  MYTHOLOGY. 

Staining  all  the  waves  with  crimson, 
With  the  crimson  of  its  lif(!-blood, 
Filling  all  the  air  with  sploudour, 
With  the  splendour  of  its  plumage  P  '* 

The  story  goes  on  to  tell  how  the  hunter  speeds  westward 
in  pursuit  of  the  Red  Swan.  At  lodges  where  he  rests, 
they  tell  him  she  has  often  passed  there,  but  those  who 
followed  her  have  never  ix  turned.  She  is  the  daughter  of 
an  old  magician  who  has  lost  his  scalp,  which  Ojibwa 
succeeds  in  recovering  for  him  and  puts  back  on  his  head, 
and  the  old  man  rises  from  the  earth,  no  longer  aged  and 
decrepit,  but  splendid  in  youthful  glory.  Ojibwa  departs, 
nud  the  magician  calls  forth  the  beautiful  maiden,  now  not 
his  daughter  but  his  sister,  and  gives  her  to  his  victorious 
friend.  It  was  in  after  days,  when  Ojibwa  had  gone  home 
with  his  bride,  that  he  travelled  forth,  and  coming  to  an 
opening  in  the  earth,  descended  and  came  to  the  abode  of 
departed  spirits  ;  there  he  could  behold  the  bright  western 
region  of  the  good,  and  the  dark  cloud  of  wickedness.  But 
the  spirits  told  him  that  his  brethren  at  home  were  quarrel- 
ling for  the  possession  of  his  wife,  and  at  last,  after  long 
wandering,  this  Red  Indian  Odysseus  returned  to  his 
mourning  constant  Penelope,  laid  the  magic  arrows  to  his 
bow,  and  stretclied  the  wicked  suitors  dead  at  his  feet.^ 
Thus  savage  legends  from  Polynesia  and  America  may  well 
support  the  theory^  that  Odysseus  visiting  the  Elysian  fields, 
or  Orpheus  descending  to  the  land  of  Hades  to  bring  back 
the  "  wide- shining  "  Eurydike,  are  but  the  Sun  himself 
descending  to,  and  ascending  from,  the  world  below. 

Where  Night  and  Hades  take  personal  shape  in  myth, 


'  'Schoolcraft,  'Algic  Res.' vol.  ii.  pp.  1-33.     The  three  arrows  recur  in 
Maiiabozho's  slaying  tlie  Shining  Manitu,  vol.  i.  p.  153.     See  the  retnavkably 
orresponding  tluv  e  niagii;  arrows  in  Orvar  Odd's  Saga  ;  Nilsson,  '  Stone  Age, 
^     "17.     The   Red-Swan   myth   of  sunset  is  intro(hiced   in   George  Eliot's 
'.:,    nish  Gypsy,'  p.  63  ;  Longfellow,  '  Hiawatha,'  xii. 

-  '^Ci.  Kuhn's   'Zeit8(!hrift,'  I860,  vol.  ix.   p.  m  ;  Max  MuUer,   'Chips,' 
vol.  ii   p.  127  ;   Cox,   'Mythology,'  vol.  i.  p.  '256,  vol.  ii.  p.  239. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


347 


■ests, 
wlio 

ter  of 

i^ibwa 

head, 

;d  and 

sparts, 

ow  not 

torious 

e  home 

g  to  an 

tbode  of 

western 

,s.     But 

quavvel- 

:ter  lou'^ 
to   his 
s  to  his 
ds  feet.^ 
may  well 
,an  ftehls, 
[ring  back 
iiimseli 

hv. 
in  myth, 


rows  rewir  in 

I  'Stone  Age, 
beorge  Eliot'a 

Uler,  'Cliips,' 


we  may  expect  to  find  conceptions  like  that  simply  shown 
in  a  Sanskrit  word  for  evening,  "  rajantmukha,"  i.  c, 
**  mouth  of  night."  Thus  the  Scandinavians  told  of  Hel 
the  death-goddess,  with  mouth  gaping  like  the  mouth  of 
Fenrir  her  brother,  the  moon-devouring  wolf ;  and  an  old 
German  poem  describes  Hell's  abyss  yawning  from  heaven 
to  earth : 

"  der  was  der  Hellen  gelich 
diu  daz  abgrunde 
begenit  mit  ir  munde 
unde  den  hiinel  zuo  der  erden.**  * 

The  sculptures  on  cathedrals  still  display  for  the  terror  of 
the  wicked  the  awful  jaws  of  Death,  the  mouth  of  Hell 
wide  yawning  to  swallow  its  victims.  Again,  where  barbaric 
cosmology  accepts  the  doctrine  of  a  firmament  arching 
above  the  earth,  and  of  an  under  world  whither  the  sun 
descends  when  he  sets  and  man  when  he  dies,  here  the 
conception  of  gates  or  portals,  whether  really  or  metaphori- 
cally meant,  has  its  place.  Such  is  the  great  gate  which 
the  Gold  Coast  negro  describes  the  Heaven  as  opening  in 
the  morning  for  the  Sun ;  such  were  the  ancient  Greek's 
gates  of  Hades,  and  the  ancient  Jew's  gates  of  Sheol. 
There  are  three  mythic  descriptions  connected  with  these 
ideas  found  among  the  Karens,  the  Algonquins,  and  the 
Aztecs,  which  are  deserving  of  special  notice.  The  Karens 
of  Birma,  a  race  among  whose  special  ideas  are  curiously 
mixed  thoughts  borrowed  from  the  more  cultured  races 
they  have  been  in  contact  with,  have  precedence  here  for 
the  distinctness  of  their  statement.  They  say  that  in  the 
west  there  are  two  massive  strata  of  rocks  which  are  con- 
tinually opening  and  shutting,  and  between  these  strata  the 
sun  descends  at  sunset,  but  how  the  upper  stratum  is  sup- 
ported, no  one  can  describe.  The  idea  comes  well  into 
view  in  the  description  of  a  Bghai  festival,  where  sacrificed 
fowls    are    thus    addressed, — "  The   seven    heavens,  thou 

»  Grimm,  •  D.  M.'  pp.  291,  767. 


r- 


'■!■ 

\-  ■ 

i  ,y> 

R 
1 1 


r  I 


'! 


Ill 


:l 


I  fi/i 


.',: 


1  , 


h  I 


'i    '! 


M 


348 


MYTHOLOGY. 


ascendest  to  the  top ;  the  seven  earths,  thou  descendest  to 
thri  hottom.  Thou  arrivest  at  Khu-the ;  thou  goest  unto 
Tha-ma  [i.  e.,  Yama,  the  Judge  of  the  Dead  in  Hades] . 
Thou  goest  through  the  crevices  of  rocks,  thou  goest 
through  the  crevices  of  precipices.  At  the  opening  and 
shutting  of  the  western  gates  of  rock,  thou  goest  in  between; 
thou  goest  below  the  earth  where  the  Sun  travels.  I  employ 
thee,  I  exhort  thee.  I  make  thee  a  messenger,  I  make  thee 
an  angel,  etc."  ^  Passing  from  Birma  to  the  region  of  the 
North  American  lakes,  we  find  a  corresponding  descripticm 
in  the  Ottawa  tale  of  Iosco,  already  quoted  here  for  its 
clearly  marked  personification  of  Sun  and  Moon.  This 
legend,  though  modern  in  some  of  its  description  of  the 
Europeans,  their  ships,  and  their  far-oft"  land  across  the 
sea,  is  evidently  founded  on  a  myth  of  Day  and  Night. 
Iosco  seems  to  be  loskeha,  the  White  One,  whose  contest 
with  his  brother  Tawiscara,  the  Dark  One,  is  an  early  and 
most  genuine  Huron  nature-myth  of  Day  and  Night.  Iosco 
and  his  friends  travel  for  years  eastward  and  eastward  to 
reach  the  sun,  and  come  at  last  to  the  dwelling  of  Mana- 
bozho  near  the  edge  of  the  world,  and  then,  a  little  bej'ond, 
to  the  chasm  to  be  passed  on  the  way  to  the  land  of  the 
Sun  and  Moon.  They  began  to  hear  the  sound  of  the 
beating  sky,  and  it  seemed  near  at  hand,  but  they  had  far 
to  travel  before  they  reached  the  place.  When  the  sky 
came  down,  its  pressure  would  force  gusts  of  wind  from  the 
opening,  so  strong  that  the  travellers  could  hardly  keep 
their  feet,  and  the  sun  passed  but  a  short  distance 
above  their  heads.  The  sky  would  come  down  with 
violence,  but  it  would  rise  slowly  and  gradually.  Iosco  and 
one  of  his  friends  stood  near  the  edge,  and  with  a  great 
eifort  leapt  through  and  gained  a  foothold  on  the  other 
side ;  but  the  other  two  were  fearful  and  undecided,  and 


•  Mason,  '  Karens'  in  '  Journ.  As.  Soc.  Bengal,'  1865,  part  ii.  pp.  233-4. 
Prof.  Licbrecht,  m  his  notice  of  the  1st  ed.  of  the  present  work,  in  Gott.  Gel. 
Aiiz.  1872,  p.  1290,  refers  to  a  iiirniese  lef^end  in  Bastian,  0.  A.  vol.  ii 
p.  616,  and  a  Mongol  legend,  Cesser  Clian,  book  iv. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


34!) 


when  their  companions  called  to  them  through  the  darkness, 
**  Leap  !  leap  !  the  sky  is  on  its  way  down,"  they  looked  up 
and  saw  it  descending,  but  paralyzed  by  fear  they  sprang  so 
feebly  that  they  only  reached  the  other  side  with  their 
hands,  and  the  sky  at  the  same  moment  striking  violently 
on  the  earth  with  a  terrible  sound,  forced  them  into  the 
dreadful  black  abyss.^  Lastly,  in  the  funeral  ritual  of  the 
Aztecs  there  is  found  a  like  description  of  the  hrst  peril 
that  the  shade  had  to  encounter  on  the  road  leading  to  that 
subterranean  Land  of  the  Dead,  which  the  sun  lights  when 
it  is  night  on  earth.  Giving  the  corpse  the  first  of  the 
passports  that  were  to  carry  him  safe  to  his  journey's  end, 
the  survivors  said  to  him,  "  Witii  these  you  will  pass 
between  the  two  mountains  that  smite  one  against  the 
other."  ^  On  the  suggestion  of  this  group  of  sulur  concep- 
tions and  that  of  Maui's  death,  we  may  perhaps  explain  as 
derived  from  a  broken-down  fancy  of  solar-nnth,  that 
famous  episode  of  Greek  legend,  where  the  good  sliip  Argo 
passed  between  the  Sympiegadeb,  those  two  huge  clills  that 
opened  and  closed  again  with  swift  and  violent  colhsion."^ 
Can  any  effort  of  baseless  fancy  have  brought  into  the  poet's 
mind  a  thought  so  quaint  in  itself,  yet  so  lilting  with  the 
Karen  and  Aztec  myths  of  the  gates  of  Nigiit  and  Death? 
With  the  Maori  legend,  the  Argonautic  tale  has  a  yet  deeper 
coincidence.  In  both  the  event  is  to  determine  the  future  ; 
but  this  thought  is  worked  out  in  two  converse  ways.     If 


e 


,1 , 


(   !' 


ip.  233-4. 
'Oott.  Gel. 
A.  vol.  ii. 


'  Schoolcraft,  '  Algic  Researches,'  vol.  ii.  p.  40,  etc.  ;  Loskiel,  'Gesch.  dor 
Mis.sion,'  Barby,  ilbi),  p.  47  (the  Euylish  edition,  part  i.  p.  35,  is  incorrect}. 
See  also  Brintoii,  •  M}ths  of  New  World,'  p.  63.  In  an  Esiiuiuiaiix  tulr, 
Giviok  conies  to  tlie  iwo  mountains  which  shut  and  u\n-n  ;  jiaddlmg  swiiily 
between,  he  gets  through,  but  tlie  mountains  clashing  togeilier  crufli  tlie 
stern  of  his  kayak.  Kink,  '  Eskimoische  Eveutyr  og  Sagn,  p.  ys,  referreil  to 
by  Liebieclit,  1.  c. 

^  Torqueniada,  '  Alonarquia  Indiana,'  xiii.  47  ;  "  Con  estos  has  de  pasar  por 
medio  de  dos  Sierras,  que  se  estan  batiendo,  y  encontraudo  la  una  con  la  otra.' 
Clavigero,  vol.  ii.  p.  94. 

8  AjioUodor.  i.  9,  22  ;  Apollon.  Rhod.  Argonautica,  ii.  310-616 ;  Pindar, 
Pythia  Carm.  iv.  370.  See  Kulin,  '  Herabkuuft  dea  Feuers,'  p.  152  (meutioa 
of  Huitbjorg). 


^11 


I 


ft 


'-— *-»,i:j 


'I  I 


!  ''i 


,|l 


/'         I 


i^iil 


350 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Maui  passed  through  the  entrance  of  Night  and  returned  to 
Day,  death  should  not  hokl  maiihind ;  if  the  Argo  passed 
the  Clashers,  the  way  should  lie  open  between  them  for 
ever.  The  Argo  sped  through  in  safety,  and  the  Synipl^- 
gades  can  clash  no  longer  on  the  passing  ship ;  Maui  was 
crushed,  and  man  comes  not  forth  again  from  Hades. 

There  is  another  solar  metaphor  which  describes  the  sun, 
not  as  a  personal  creature,  but  as  a  member  of  a  yet  greater 
being.  He  is  called  in  Java  and  Sumatra  '*  Mata-ari,"  in 
Madagascar  "  Maso-andro,"  the  "  Eye  of  Day."  If  we 
look  for  translation  of  this  thought  from  metaphor  into 
myth,  we  may  find  it  in  the  New  Zealand  stories  of  Maui 
setting  his  own  eye  up  in  heaven  as  the  Sun,  and  the  eyes 
of  his  two  children  as  the  Morning  and  the  Evening  Stars.^ 
The  nature-myth  thus  implicitly  and  explicitly  stated  is 
one  widely  developed  on  Aryan  ground.  It  forms  part  of 
that  macrocosmic  description  of  the  universe  well  known  in 
Asiatic  myth,  and  in  Europe  expressed  in  that  passage  of 
the  Orphic  poem  which  tells  of  Jove,  at  once  the  world's 
ruler  and  the  world  itself :  his  glorious  head  irradiates  the 
sky  where  hangs  his  starry  hair,  the  waters  of  the  sounding 
ocean  are  the  belt  that  girds  his  sacred  body  the  earth 
omniparent,  his  eyes  are  sun  and  moon,  his  mind,  moving 
and  ruling  by  counsel  all  things,  is  the  royal  sether  that  no 
voice  nor  sound  escapes : 

"  Sunt  oculi  Phoebus,  Phceboque  ad  versa  recurrens 
Cynthia.     Mens  verax  nuUique  obnoxius  fether 
Eegius  iuteritu',  qui  cuucta  inovetque  regitque 
Consilio.    Vox  nulla  potest,  sonitusve,  nee  uUus 
Hancce  Jovis  sobolem  strepitus,  nee  fama  latere. 
Sic  animi  sensum,  et  caput  immortale  beatus 
Obtinet :  illustre,  immensum,  immutabile  pandens, 
Atque  lacertorum  valido  stans  robore  certus."  ' 

Where  the    Aryan  myth-maker  takes  no  thought  of  the 

>  Polack, '  Manners  of  N.  Z.'  vol  i.  p.  16  ;  '  New  Zealaud,'  voL  L  p.  868; 
Yate,  p.  142  ;  Schirren,  pp.  88,  165. 
*  Euseb.  Prsep.  Evaug.  iii.  9. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


351 


lesser  light,  he  can  in  various  terms  describe  the  sun  as  the 
eye  of  heaven.  In  the  Rig- Veda  it  is  the  "  eye  of  Mitra, 
Varuna,  and  Agni  *' — "  chakshuh  Mitrasya  Varunasyah 
Agneh."  ^  In  the  Zend-Avesta  it  is  "  the  shining  sun  with 
the  swift  horses,  the  eye  of  Ahura-Muzda  and  Mithra,  the 
lord  of  the  region."^  To  Hesiod  it  is  the  "  all-seeing  eye 
of  Zeus  " — "  irdvTa  ibciiv  Aios  o^^aAjno's:  "  Macrobius  spuaks 
of  antiquity  calling  the  sun  the  eye  of  Jove — '*  tl  rjKi.os ; 
ovpdnos  6<f)da\fx6s"  '  The  old  Germans,  in  calling  the  sun 
"Wuotan's  eye,"*  recognized  Wuotan,  \Vodc!U,  Odhin,  as 
being  himself  the  divine  Heaven.  These  mythic  expressions 
are  of  the  most  unequivocal  type.  By  the  hint  they  give, 
conjectural  interpretations  may  be  here  not  indeed  asserted, 
but  suggested,  for  two  of  the  quaintest  episodes  of  ancient 
European  myth.  Odin,  the  All-father,  say  the  old  scalds 
of  Scandinavia,  sits  among  his  ^Esir  in  the  city  Asgard,  on 
his  high  throne  Hlidskialf  (Lid-shelf),  whence  he  can  look 
down  over  the  whole  world  discerning  all  the  deeds  of  men. 
He  is  an  old  man  wrapped  in  his  wide  cloak,  and  clouding 
his  face  with  his  wide  hat,  "  os  pileo  ne  cultu  proderetur 
obnubens,"  as  Saxo  Grammaticus  has  it.  Odin  is  one- 
eyed  ;  he  desired  to  drink  from  Mimir's  well,  but  he  had 
to  leave  there  one  of  his  eyes  in  pledge,  as  it  is  said  in  the 
Voluspa : 

"  All  know  I,  Odin  !    Where  thou  hiddest  thine  eye 
In  Mimir's  famous  well. 
Mead  drinks  Mimir  every  morning 
From  VVale-father's  pledge — Wit  ye  what  this  is  P  " 


'.! 


1, 1 


As  Odin's  single  eye  seems  certainly  to  be  the  sun  in 
heaven,  one  may  guess  what  is  the  lost  eye  in  the  well — 
perhaps  the  sun's  own  reflection  in  any  pool,  or  more  likely 


!l 


of  the 
|Lp.868; 


*  Big  Veda,  i.  115  ;  Bohtlingk  and  Roth,  s.  v.  'mitra.' 

*  Avesta,  tr.  Spiegel  and  Bleeck,  Yagna,  i.  35  ;  comj>are  Burnouf,  Yajna. 
»  Macrob.  Saturnal.  i.  21,  13.     See  iMax  Mtiller,  'Chips,   vol.  ii.  p.  86. 

*  Grimm,    'Deutsche  Myth.'  p.  665.     See  also  Hauusch,  'Slaw.  Myth, 
p.  213. 


!ni 


iM,; 


:J52 


MYTHOLOGY. 


the  moon,  which  in  popular  myth  from  the  time  of  the  VeJa 
has  been  found  in  the  well.^  Possibly,  too,  some  such  soI;.i' 
fancy  may  explain  part  of  the  myth  of  Perseus.  There  are 
three  Scandinavian  Norns,  whose  names  are  Urdhr,  Verdh- 
andi,  and  Skuld — Was,  and  Is,  and  Shall-be — and  these 
three  maidens  are  the  "  Weird  sisters  "  who  fix  the  lifetime 
of  all  men.  So  the  Fates,  the  Parkai,  daughters  of  the 
inevitable  Anangke,  divide  among  them  the  periods  of 
time  :  Lachesis  sings  the  past,  K16th6  the  present,  Atropos 
the  future.  Now  is  it  allowable  to  consider  these  fatal 
sisters  as  of  common  nature  with  two  other  mythic  sister- 
triads — the  Graiai  and  their  kinsfolk  the  Gorgons  ?^  If  it 
be  so,  it  is  easy  to  understand  why  of  the  three  Gorgons 
one  alone  was  mortal,  whose  life  her  two  immortal  sisters 
could  not  save,  for  the  deathless  past  and  future  cannot 
save  the  ever-dying  present.  Nor  would  the  riddle  be  hard 
to  read,  what  is  the  one  eye  that  the  Graiai  had  between 
them,  and  passed  from  one  to  another  ? — the  eye  of  da}' — 

>  Edda,  '  ViJluspa,'  22  ;  '  Gylfaginninj;,'  15.  See  Grimm,  'D.  M.'  p.  133; 
De  Gulieniatis,  '  Zoo\'></n'ii\  Mytholoj^y,'  vol.  i.  p.  18,  81. 

-  As  to  the  ideiililicution  of  the  Nunis  and  the  Fate.s,  see  Grimm,  '  D  M.' 
pp.  376-8G  ;  Max  Miillcr,  'Ciiips,'vol.  ii.  p.  Ifi-i.  It  is  to  be  observed  in 
connexion  ',vith  the  Perscus-niyth,  that  another  of  its  olisonre  episodes,  the 
Gorffon's  head  turning  those  who  bok  on  it  into  stone,  corresponds  with 
myths  of  the  sun  itself.  In  Jlispaniola,  men  came  out  of  two  caves  (thus 
being  born  of  tlieir  mother  Karth)  ;  tiie  giant  who  guarded  these  cavea 
strayed  one  niglit,  and  the  ri^'ng  sun  turned  liini  into  a  great  rock  called 
Kauta,  just  as  the  Gorgon's  lead  turned  Atlas  the  Earth-bearer  into  the 
mountain  that  bears  his  name  ;  after  tliis,  others  of  the  early  cave-men  were 
surprised  by  the  sunlight,  and  tuimd  into  stones,  trees,  plants  or  beasts 
(Friar  Roman  Pane  in  'Life  of  Coluinbus '  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  xii.  p.  80; 
J  G.  Miiller,  'Amer.  Urrelig.' ]i.  179).  In  Central  America  a  Quiche  legend 
relates  how  the  ancient  animals  were  jietrilicd  by  tlie  Sun  (Hrasseur,  '  Popol 
Vuh,'  p.  245.  Tims  the  Anurirans  have  the  analogue  of  the  Siaudinavian 
myths  of  ginnts  and  dwarfs  surpiised  by  dayliglit  outside  tlieir  hiding-places, 
and  turned  to  stones.  Such  fancies  apjiear  connected  with  the  fancied  human 
shapes  of  rocks  or  "standing-stones"  which  peasants  still  account  for  aa 
transformed  creatures.  Thus  in  Fiji,  two  rocks  are  a  male  and  fennile  deity 
turned  to  stone  nt  daylight,  Seeninnn,  '  Viti,'  p.  66  ;  see  Lielirecht  in  Heidel- 
berg. Jahrb.  1864,  p.  216.  Tbis  idea  is  brought  also  into  the  Per.seus-niyth, 
lor  the  rocks  abounding  in  Seriphos  are  the  islanders  thus  petritied  by  the 
Gorgon's  head. 


ur«eareara 


MYTHOLOGY. 


ooi 


X  133 ; 

D   M.' 

irved  in 
lies,  the 
lis  with 
(thus 
|e  caves 
called 
Into  the 
in  were 
beasts 
p.   BO; 
legend 
'  Popol 
iuiivian 
places, 
human 
for  aa 
|le  deity 
Hfidel- 
is-niyth, 
by  tha 


the  sun,  that  the  past  gives  up  to  the  present,  and  the 
present  to  the  future. 

Compared  with  the  splendid  Lord  of  Day,  the  pale  Lad}' 
of  Night  takes,  in  myth  as  in  nature,  a  lower  and  lesser 
place.  Among  the  wide  legendary  group  which  associates 
together  Sun  and  Moon,  two  striking  examples  are  to  be 
seen  in  the  traditions  by  which  half-civilized  races  of  South 
America  traced  their  rise  from  the  condition  of  the  savage 
tribes  around  them.  These  legends  have  been  appealed  to 
even  by  modern  writers  as  gratefully-remembered  records 
of  real  human  benefactors,  who  carried  long  ago  to  America 
the  culture  of  the  Old  World.  But  happily  for  historic 
truth,  mythic  tradition  tells  its  tales  without  expurgating 
the  episodes  which  betray  its  real  character  to  more  critical 
observation.  The  Muyscas  of  the  high  plains  of  Bogota 
were  once,  they  said,  savages  without  agriculture,  religion 
or  law  ;  but  there  came  to  them  from  the  East  an  old  and 
bearded  man,  Bochica,  the  child  of  the  Sun,  and  he  taught 
them  to  till  the  fields,  to  clothe  themselves,  to  worship  the 
gods,  to  become  a  nation.  But  Bochica  had  a  wicked, 
beautiful  wife,  Huythaca,  who  loved  to  spite  and  spoil  her 
husband's  work  ;  and  she  it  was  who  made  the  river  swell 
till  the  land  was  covered  by  a  flood,  and  but  a  few  of  man- 
kind escaped  upon  the  mountain-tops.  Then  Bochica  was 
wroth,  and  he  drove  the  wicked  Huythaca  from  the  earth, 
and  made  her  the  Moon,  for  there  had  been  no  moon  be- 
fore; and  he  cleft  the  rocks  and  made  the  mighty  cataract 
of  Tequendama,  to  let  the  deluge  flow  away.  Then,  when 
the  land  was  dry,  lie  gave  to  the  remnant  of  mankind  the 
year  and  its  periodic  sacrifices,  and  the  worship  of  the  Sun. 
Now  the  people  who  told  this  myth  had  not  forgotten,  what 
indeed  we  might  guess  without  their  help,  that  Bojhica  was 
himself  Zuhe,  the  Sun,  and  Huythaca,  the  Sun's  wife,  the 
Moon.^ 

'  I'iedrahita,  '  Hist.  Gt  'e  las  Conqniatas  del  Nuevo  Reyno  do  Granada,' 
Antwerp,  1688,  part  i.  A\  c.  3  ;  Humboldt,  'Monumeus,'  pi.  vL  ;  J.  0. 
Miiller,  '  Amer.  Urrelig.'  pp.  423     30. 

VOL.  I.  A    A 


'%■ 


»m 


,h 


:!■) 


i|L'« 


354 


MYTHOLOGY. 


Like  to  this  in  meaning,  though  different  in  fancy,  is  the 
civilization-myth  of  the  Incas.  Men,  said  this  Qqichua 
legend,  were  savages  dwelling  in  caves  like  wild  beasts, 
devouring  wild  roots  and  fruit  and  human  flesh,  covering 
themselves  with  leaves  and  bark  or  skins  of  animals.  But 
our  father  the  Sur  took  pit}-  on  them,  and  sent  two  of  his 
children,  Manco  Ccapac  and  his  sister-wife,  Mama  OccUo  : 
these  rose  from  the  lake  of  Titicaca,  and  gave  to  the  uncul- 
tured hordes  law  and  government,  marriage  and  moral 
order,  tillage  and  art  and  science.  Thus  was  founded  the 
great  Peruvian  empire,  where  in  after  ages  each  Inca  and 
his  sister- wife,  continuing  the  mighty  race  of  Manco  Ccapac 
and  Mama  Occllo,  represented  in  rule  and  religion  not  only 
the  first  earthly  roj'al  ancestors,  but  the  heavenly  father  and 
mother  of  whom  we  can  see  these  to  be  personifications, 
namely,  the  Sun  himself,  and  his  sister-wife  the  Moon.* 
Thus  the  nations  of  Bogota  and  Peru,  remembering  their 
days  of  former  savagery,  and  the  association  of  their  culture 
with  their  national  religion,  embodied  their  traditions  in 
myths  of  an  often-recurring  type,  ascribing  to  the  gods 
themselves,  in  human  shape,  the  establishment  of  their  own 
worship. 

The  "inconstant  moon"  figures  in  a  group  of  charac- 
teristic stories.  Australian  legend  says  that  Mityan,  the 
Moon,  was  a  native  cat,  who  fell  in  love  with  some  one  else's 
wife,  and  was  driven  away  to  wander  ever  since.^  The 
Khasias  of  the  Himalaya  say  that  the  Moon  falls  monthly 
in  love  with  his  mother-in-law,  who  throws  ashes  in  his 
face,  whence   his  spots.'      Slavonic   legend,  following  the 

'  Garcilaso  de  la  Vega,  ' Comnientarios  Reales,'  i.  c.  15  ;  Prescott,  'Peru,* 
vol.  i.  p.  7  ;  J.  G.  Miiller,  pp.  30:5-8,  ,^28-39.  Other  Peruvie-.  versions  show 
the  fundamental  solnr  idea  in  difierent  mythic  shapes  (Tr  of  Cieza  de  Leon, 
tr.  and  ed.  by  C.  R.  Markliam,  Hakluyt  Hoo.  1864,  p.  xlix.  298,  816,  372). 
W,  B.  Steven-on  ('Residence  in  S.  America,"  vol.  i.  p.  394)  and  Bastian 
('Mensch,*  vol.  iii.  p.  347)  mot  with  a  curious  perversion  of  the  myth,  in 
wliicli  Inca  Manco  Ccapac,  corrupted  into  Ingasman  Cocapac,  gave  rise  to  « 
s*^<)ry  of  an  Englishvian  figuring  in  the  midst  of  Peruvian  mythology. 

*  Stauliridge,  '  Abor.  of  Australia,'  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  L  p.  801. 

'  J.  D.  Hooker,  '  ITinialayau  Journals,'  vol.  ii.  p.  270. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


855 


Iharac- 
the 
else's 
The 
lonthly 
in  his 
g  the 

'  Peru,' 

[ins  show 
Jo  Leiin, 
16,  372). 
Bastian 
lyth,  in 
Irise  to  • 


same  track,  says  that  the  Moon,  King  of  Night  and  hushand 
of  the  Sun,  faithlessly  loved  the  Morning  Star,  wherefore 
he  was  cloven  through  in  punishment,  as  we  see  him  in  the 
sky.^  By  a  difierent  train  of  thought,  the  Moon's  periodic 
death  and  revival  has  suggested  a  painful  contrast  to  the 
destinj'  of  man,  in  one  of  the  most  often-repeated  and 
characteristic  myths  of  South  Africa,  which  is  thus  told 
among  the  Namaqua.  The  Moon  once  sent  the  Hare  to 
Men  to  give  this  message,  "  Like  as  I  die  and  rise  to  life 
again,  so  you  also  shall  die  and  rise  to  life  again,"  but  the 
Hare  went  to  the  Men  and  said,  "  Like  as  I  die  and  do  not 
rise  again,  so  you  shall  also  die  and  not  rise  to  life  again." 
Then  the  Hare  returned  and  told  the  Moon  what  he  had 
done,  and  the  Moon  struck  at  him  with  a  hatchet  and  slit 
his  lip,  as  it  has  remained  ever  since,  and  some  say  the 
Hare  fled  and  is  still  fleeing,  but  others  say  he  clawed  at 
the  Moon's  ftice  and  left  the  scars  that  are  still  to  be  seen 
on  it,  and  they  also  say  that  the  reason  why  the  Namaqua 
object  to  eating  the  hare  (a  prejudice  which  in  fact  they 
share  with  very  different  races)  is  because  he  brought  to 
men  this  evil  message.'^  It  is  remarkable  that  a  story  so 
closely  resembling  this,  that  it  is  difficult  not  to  suppose 
both  to  be  versions  from  a  common  original,  is  told  in  the 
distant  Fiji  Islands.  There  was  a  dispute  between  two 
gods  as  to  how  man  should  die  :  "  Ra  Vula  (the  Moon) 
contended  that  man  should  be  like  himself — disappear 
awhile  and  then  live  again.  Ra  Kalavo  (the  Rat)  would 
not  listen  to  this  kind  proposal,  but  said,  *  Let  man  die  as 
a  rat  dies.'  And  he  prevailed."  The  dates  of  the  versions 
seem  to  show  that  the  presence  of  these  myths  among  the 
Hottentots  and  Fijians,  at  the  two  opposite  sides  of  the 
globe,  is  at  any  rate  not  due  to  transmission  in  modern  times.^ 

»  Hiinusch,  'Slaw.  Myth.'  p.  269. 

'  Bleek,  '  Keynavd  in  S.  AlVica,'  pp.  69-74  ;  C.  J.  Andersson,  'Lake  Ngami,' 
p.  328  ;  see  Grout,  '  Zulu-land,*  j).  148  ;  Arliousset  and  nuunias,  p.  471.  As 
to  connexion  of  the  moon  with  the  hare,  cf.  Skr.  "  gayanka  ;"  and  in  Mexico, 
Sahagun,  book  vii.  c.  2,  in  King,sl)oroiigh,  \-ol.  vii. 

'*  Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  L  p.  205.     Comi)are  the  Caroline  Island  myth  that 

A  ▲  2 


m 


1 


1  I 


ii 


i'  it: 


h 


fit 


356 


MYTHOLOGY. 


There  is  a  very  elaborate  savage  nature-myth  of  the 
generation  of  the  Stars,  which  may  unquestionably  serve  as 
a  clue  connecting  the  history  of  two  distant  tribes.  The 
rude  Mintira  of  the  Malayan  Peninsula  express  in  plain 
terms  the  belief  in  a  solid  firmament,  usual  in  the  lower 
grades  of  civilization ;  they  say  the  sky  is  a  great  pot  held 
over  the  earth  by  a  cord,  and  if  this  cord  broke,  everything 
on  earth  would  be  crushed.  The  Moon  is  a  woman,  and 
the  Sun  also  :  the  Stars  are  the  Moon's  children,  and  the 
Sim  had  in  old  times  as  many.  Fearing,  however,  that 
mankind  could  not  bear  so  much  brightness  and  heat,  they 
agreed  each  to  devour  her  children ;  but  the  Moon,  instead 
of  eating  up  her  Stars,  hid  them  from  the  Sun's  sight,  who, 
believing  them  all  devoured,  ate  up  her  own  ;  no  sooner  had 
she  done  it,  than  the  Moon  brought  her  family  out  of  their 
hiding-place.  When  the  Sun  saw  them,  filled  with  rage 
she  chased  the  Moon  to  kill  her ;  the  chase  has  lasted  ever 
since,  and  sometimes  tlie  Sun  even  comes  near  enough  to 
bite  the  Moon,  and  that  is  an  eclipse ;  the  Sun,  as  men  may 
still  see,  devours  his  Stars  at  dawn,  and  the  Moon  hides 
hers  all  day  while  the  Sun  is  near,  and  only  brings  them 
out  at  night  when  her  pursuer  is  far  away.  Now  among  a 
tribe  of  North  East  India,  the  Ho  of  Chota-Nagpore,  the 
myth  reappears,  obviously  from  the  same  source,  but  with  a 
varied  ending ;  the  Sun  cleft  the  Moon  in  twain  for  her 
deceit,  and  thus  cloven  and  growing  old  again  she  remains, 
and  her  daughters  with  her  which  are  the  Stars.^ 

From  savagery  up  to  civilization,  there  may  be  traced  in 
the  mythology  of  the   Stars  a  course  of  thought,  changed 


ill  the  lieginiiiiig  men  only  quitted  life  on  the  last  day  of  the  waning  moon, 
and  re.suscitated  as  from  a  peaceful  sleep  when  she  reappeared  ;  but  the  evil 
spirit  i'ri^^'irers  iiiHicted  a  death  from  whicli  there  is  no  revUal  ;  De  Drosses, 
'  Hist  des.  Navig.  aux  Terren  Austr.des,'  vol.  ii.  p.  479.  Also  in  a  song  of 
the  Indi.ms  of  Calilbrnia  it  id  said,  that  even  as  the  moon  dies  and  returns 
to  life,  BO  tliey  shall  bo  re-born  after  death  ;  Duflot  do  Mofras  in  Bastian, 
'Uechtsverlmltnisse,'  p.  385,  see  '  Psychologie,'  p.  64. 

'  Jouru.   Ind.  Archip.  vol.  i.  p.  284  ;  vol.  iv.  p.  333  ;  Tickell  in   '  Joui'a 
As.  Soc'  vol.  ix.  part  ii.  f    797  ;  Latham,  '  Descr,  Eth  '  vol.  ii.  p.  422. 


i  il 


MYTHOLOGV. 


rage 


g  moon, 

the  evil 

Brosses, 

song  of 

returns 

IBastian, 

*  Joura 
12. 


indeed  in  applicution,  yet  never  broken  in  its  evident  con- 
nexion from  first  to  last.  The  savage  sees  individual  stars 
as  animate  beings,  or  combines  star-groups  into  living 
celestial  creatures,  or  limbs  of  them,  or  objects  connected 
with  them  ;  while  at  the  other  extremity  of  the  scale  of 
civilizat'on,  the  modern  astronomer  keeps  up  just  such 
ancient  fancies,  turning  them  to  account  in  useful  survival, 
as  a  means  of  mapping  out  the  celestial  globe.  The  savage 
names  and  stories  of  stars  and  constellations  may  seem  at 
first  but  childish  and  purposeless  fancies ;  but  it  always 
happens  in  the  study  of  the  lower  races,  that  the  more 
means  we  have  of  understanding  their  thoughts,  the  more 
sense  and  reason  do  we  rind  in  them.  The  aborigines  of 
Australia  say  that  Yurree  and  Wanjel,  who  are  the  stars  we 
call  Castor  and  Pollux,  pursue  Purra  the  Kangaroo  (our 
Capella),  and  kill  him  at  the  beginning  of  the  great  heat, 
and  the  mirage  is  the  smoke  of  the  fire  tliey  roast  him  by. 
They  say  also  that  Marpean-Kurrk  and  Neilloan  (Arcturus 
and  Lyra)  were  the  discoverers  of  the  ant-pupas  and  the  eggs 
of  the  loan-bird,  and  taught  the  aborigines  to  find  them  for 
food.  Translated  into  the  language  of  fact,  these  simple 
myths  record  the  summer  place  of  the  stars  in  question, 
and  the  seasons  of  ant-pupas  and  loau-eggs,  which  seasons 
are  marked  by  the  stars  who  are  called  their  discoverers.^ 
Not  less  transparent  is  the  meaning  in  the  beautiful  Aigoa- 
quin  myth  of  the  Sun  (iier-Maker.  In  old  days  eternal 
winter  reigned  upon  the  earth,  till  a  sprightly  little  animal 
called  the  Fisher,  helped  by  other  beasts  his  friends,  broke 
an  opening  through  the  sky  into  the  lovely  heaven-land 
beyond,  let  the  warm  winds  pour  forth  and  the  summer 
descend  to  earth,  and  opened  the  cages  of  the  prisoned 
birds  :  but  when  the  dwellers  in  heaven  saw  their  birds  let 
loose  and  their  warm  gales  descending,  they  started  in  pur- 
suit, and  shooting  their  aiTows  at  the  Fisher,  hit  him  at 
last  in  his  one  vulnerable  spot  at  the  tip  of  his  tail ;  thus 
he  died  for  the  good  of  the  inliabitants  of  eanh,  and  became 

»  StanbriJge  in  'Tr.  Etli.  Soc'  vol.  L  pp.  U01-i>. 


'i  U 


■I 


1 


M 


ti 


358 


MYTHOLOGY. 


)  ill 


,  I  ! 


|:>     I 


the  constellation  that  bears  his  name,  so  that  still  at  the 
proper  season  men  see  him  lying  as  he  fell  townrd  the  north 
on  the  plains  of  heaven,  with  the  fatal  arrow  still  sticking 
in  his  tail.*  Compare  these  savage  stories  with  Orion  pur- 
suing the  Pleiad  sisters  who  take  refuge  from  him  in  the 
sea,  and  the  maidens  who  wept  themselves  to  death  and 
became  the  starry  cluster  of  the  Hyades,  whose  rising  and 
setting  betokened  rain :  such  iiiythic  creatures  might  for 
simple  significance  have  been  invented  by  savages,  even  as 
the  savage  constellation-myths  might  have  been  made  by 
ancient  Greeks.  Whru  we  consider  that  the  Australians 
who  can  invent  s^' :h  myths,  and  invent  them  with  such 
fulness  of  i^aoaniiig,  nra  savages  avIio  put  two  and  one  to- 
gether to  .  ■  l;o  tii?!r  numeral  for  three,  we  may  judge  how 
deep  in  t' o  li  t0j'_,  of  culture  those  conceptions  lie,  of 
which  the  ;  oliv,::  ..-r  stUl  represented  in  our  ritar-ma])s  by 
Castor  and  ^^ollux,  A  ('turus  and  Sirius,  Bootes  and  Orion, 
the  Argo  and  the  Charles's  Wain,  the  Toucan  and  the 
Southern  Cross.  Whether  civilized  or  savnge,  whether 
ancient  or  new  made  after  the  ancient  manner,  such  names 
are  so  like  in  character  that  any  tribe  of  men  might  adopt 
them  from  any  other,  as  American  tribes  are  known  to 
receive  European  names  into  their  own  skies,  and  as  our 
constellation  of  the  Royal  Oak  is  said  to  have  found  its 
way  in  new  copies  of  the  old  ITindu  treatises,  into  the 
company  of  the  Seven  Sages  and  the  other  ancient  constel- 
lations of  Brahmanic  India. 

Such  fancies  are  so  fan.  nil,  that  two  peoples  seldom  fall 
on  the  same  name  for  ;l  constellation,  while,  even  within 
the  limits  of  the  same  race,  terms  may  diffe"  altogether. 
Thus  the  stars  which  we  call  Orion's  Belt  are  in  Vew 
Zealand  either  the  Elbow  of  Maui,  or  th  jy  form  the  stern 

'  Schoolcraft,  '  Alj^'ic  Res. '  vol.  i.  pp.  67-66,  The  .story  of  the  hero  or 
deity  invulnerable  like  Achilles  .save  in  one  weak  spot,  recurs  in  the  tales 
of  the  slaying  of  tlie  Shining  Maiiitu,  wIkisc  scalp  alone  was  vulnerable,  and 
of  the  mighty  Kwcsind,  who  (umld  be  killr'!  only  by  the  cone  of  the  white 
pine  wounding  the  vulnerable  place  on  the  crown  of  his  head  (vol.  L  p.  153 ; 
vol.  ii.  p.  163). 


MYTHOLOGY. 


359 


of  the  Canoe  of  Tamarerete,  whose  anchor  dropped  from 
the  prow  is  the  Southern  Cross.^  The  Great  Bear  is  equally 
like  a  Wain,  Orion's  Belt  serves  as  well  for  Frigga's  or 
Mary's  Spindle,  or  Jacob's  Staff.  Yet  sometimes  natural 
correspondences  occur.  The  seven  sister  Pleiades  seem  to 
the  Australians  a  group  of  girls  playing  to  a  corroboree  ; 
while  the  North  American  Indians  call  them  the  Dancers, 
and  the  Lapps  the  Company  of  Virgins.^  Still  more 
striking  is  the  correspondence  between  savages  and  cultured 
nations  in  fancies  of  the  bright  s:arry  band  that  lies  like  a 
road  across  the  sky.  The  Basutos  call  it  the  "  Way  of  the 
Gods;"  the  Ojis  say  it  is  the  "Way  of  Spirits,"  which 
souls  go  up  to  heaven  by.^  North  American  tribes  know  it 
as  "  the  Path  of  the  Master  of  Life,"  the  "  Path  of  Spirits," 
**  the  Road  of  Souls,"  where  they  travel  to  the  land  beyond 
the  grave,  and  where  their  cainp-fires  may  bo  seen  blazing 
as  brighter  stars.*  Such  savage  imaginations  of  the  Milk}' 
Way  fit  with  the  Lithuanian  myth  of  the  *'  Road  of  the 
Birds,"  at  whose  end  the  souls  of  the  good,  fancied  as 
flitting  away  at  death  like  birds,  dwell  free  and  happy.^ 
That  souls  dwell  in  the  Galaxy  was  a  thought  familiar  to 
the  Pythagoreans,  who  gave  it  on  their  master's  word  that 
the  souls  that  crowd  there  descend,  and  ai)pear  to  men  as 
dreams,^  and  to  the  Mauiclneans  whose  fancy  transferred 
pure  souls  to  this  "  column  of  Hght,"  whence  they  could 


•  i! 


,  t 


K 


im  fall 
?ithin 
lether. 

stern 

I  hero  or 

|he  tales 

jlo,  and 

lie  white 

p.  153 ; 


>  Taylor,  'New  Zealand,'  p.  363. 

2  Staiibriiige,  1.  c.  ;  Charlevoix,  vol.  vi.  p.  148  ;  Leems,  Lapland,  in  Pinker- 
ton,  vol,  i.  p.  411.  The  name  of  the  Bear  occurring  in  North  America  in 
connexion  with  the  stars  of  the  Great  and  lattle  Hear  ^Cliarlevoix,  I.  c.  ; 
Cotton  Mather  in  Sciioolcraft,  'Tribes,'  vol.  i.  p.  lihi)  has  long  been  remarked 
on  (Goguet,  vol.  i.  p.  262  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  3()6,  but  with  relerence  to  Greenland,  see 
Cranz,  p.  294).  See  observations  on  the  history  of  the  Aryan  name  in  Alax 
Miiller,  'Lectures,'  2nd  series,  p.  Sul. 

^  Casalis,  p.  196  ;  Waitz,  vol.  ii.  p.  191. 

*  Long's  Exp.  vol.  1.  p.  288  ;  Schoolcraft,  part  i.  p.  272  ;  Le  Jeune  in  'Rel. 
des  J^s.  de  la  Nouvelle  France,'  1634,  p.  18  ;  Loskiel,  part  i.  p.  85;  J.  Q.. 
Muller,  p.  63, 

*  Hanusch,  pp.  272,  407,  415. 

*  Porpliyr.  de  Antro  Nympharum,  28  ;  Macrob.  de  Somn.  Scip.  i.  12. 


I! 


'1. 


m' 


'  1 


St     I 


r>G() 


MYTHOLOGY. 


come  down  to  earth  and  again  return.*  It  is  a  fall  from 
such  ideas  of  the  Galaxy  to  the  Siamese  "  Road  of  the 
White  Elephant,"  the  Spaniards'  "  Road  of  Santiago,"  or 
the  Turkish  **  Pilgrims'  Road,"  and  a  still  lower  fall  to  the 
**  Straw  Road  "  of  the  Syrian,  the  Persian,  and  the  Turk, 
who  thus  compare  it  with  their  lanes  littered  with  the 
morsels  of  straw  that  fall  from  the  nets  the}'  carry  it  in.' 
But  of  all  the  fancies  which  have  attached  themselves  to 
the  celestial  road,  we  at  home  have  the  quaintest.  Passing 
along  the  short  and  crooked  way  from  St.  Paul's  to  Cannon 
Street,  one  thinks  to  how  small  a  remnant  has  shrunk  the 
name  of  the  great  street  of  the  Wsetlingas,  which  in  old 
days  ran  from  Dover  through  London  into  AVales.  But 
there  is  a  Watling  Street  in  heaven  as  well  as  on  earth, 
•once  familiar  to  Englishmen,  though  now  almost  fijrgotten 
«ven  in  local  dialect.  Chaucer  thus  speaks  of  it  in  his 
■  House  of  Fame  : ' — 

"  Lo  there  (quod  he)  cast  up  thine  eye 
Se  yoiidir,  lo,  the  Galaxie, 
The  wbiche  men  clepe  The  Milky  Way, 
For  it  is  white,  and  some  parfay, 
Ycallin  it  han  Watlynge  strete."  ' 

Turning  from  the  mythology  of  the  heavenly  bodies,  a 
glance  over  other  distri(;ts  of  nature-myth  will  afford  fresh 
iividence  that  such  legend  has  its  early  home  within  the 
precincts  of  savage  culture.  It  is  thus  with  the  myths  of 
the  Winds.  The  New  Zealanders  tell  how  Maui  can  ride 
upon  the  other  Winds  or  imj^rison  them  in  their  caves,  but 
he  cannot  catch  the  West  Wind  nor  find  its  cave  to  roll  a 

'  Beausobre,  '  Hist,  de  Manidi^e,  vol.  ii.  p.  513. 

•  Hastiaii,  'Oestl.  Asien,' vol.  iii.  p.  341  ;  '  Chronique  de  Tabari,' tr.  Dubeux, 
p.  24  ;  Oriium,  '  D.  M.'  p.  330,  etc. 

*  Chaucer,  '  House  of  Fame,'  ii.  427.  With  reference  to  questions  of  Aryan 
mytliology  illustrated  by  the  savage  galaxy-myths,  see  Pictet,  '  Origines,* 
pint  ii.  p.  58i,  etc  Mr.  J.  Jeremiali  informs  nie  that  '  Watling  Street,' is 
etiil  (1871)  a  name  for  the  Milky  Way  in  Scotland  ;  see  also  his  p;iper  on 
'Welsh  names  of  the  Milky  Way,'  Philological  See,  Nov.  17,  1871.  The 
corresponding  name  '  London  lioad'  is  used  in  Sutl'olk. 


MYTHOLOOY". 


3()1 


^ies,  a 
fresh 

L  tlie 

Itlis  of 

In  ride 
ps,  but 
I  roU  a 

|of  Aryan 

street,'  is 
lyapcr  on 
I7I.     The 


stone  against  the  mouth,  and  therefore  it  prevails,  yet 
from  time  to  time  he  all  but  overtakes  it,  and  hiding  in  its 
cave  for  shelter  it  dies  away.^  Such  is  the  fancy  in  classic 
poetry  of  iEolus  holding  the  prisoned  winds  in  his  dungeon 
cave : — 

"  Hie  vasto  rex  ^olus  antro 
Luctantes  ventos,  tempestatesque  sonoras 
Imperio  premit,  ac  viuclis  et  carcere  frsenat."  • 

The  myth  of  the  Four  Winds  is  developed  among  the 
native  races  of  America  with  a  range  and  vigour  and  beauty 
scarcely  rivalled  elsewhere  in  the  mythology  of  the  world. 
Episodes  belonging  to  this  branch  of  Red  Indian  folklore 
are  collected  in  Schoolcraft's  *  Algic  Researches,'  and  thence 
rendered  with  admirable  taste  and  sympathy,  though  un- 
fortunately not  with  proper  truth  to  the  originals,  in  Long- 
fellow's master-piece,  the  '  Song  of  Hiawatha.'  The  West 
Wind  Mudjekeewis  is  Kabeyun,  Father  of  the  Winds, 
Wabun  is  the  East  Wind,  Shawondasee  the  South  Wind, 
Kabibonoldca  the  North  Wind.  But  there  is  another 
mighty  wind  not  belonging  to  the  mystic  quaternion, 
Manabozho  the  North- West  Wind,  therefore  described  with 
mythic  appropriateness  as  the  unlawful  child  of  Kabeyun. 
The  fierce  North  Wind,  Kabibonokka,  in  vain  strives  to 
force  Shingebis,  the  lingering  diver-bird,  from  his  warm 
and  happy  winter-lodge  ;  and  the  lazy  South  Wind,  Sha- 
wondasee, sighs  for  the  maiden  of  the  prairie  with  her  sunny 
hair,  till  it  turns  to  silvery  white,  and  as  he  breathes  upon 
her,  the  prairie  dandelion  has  vanished.*  Man  naturally 
divides  his  horizon  into  four  quarters,  before  and  behind, 
light  and  left,  and  thus  comes  to  fancy  the  world  a  square, 
and  to  refer  the  winds  to  its  four  corners.  Dr.  Brinton,  in 
his  *  Myths  of  the  New  World,'  has  well  traced  from  these 
ideas  the  growth  of  legend  after  legend  among  the  native 

•  Yate,  'New  Zealand,'  p.  144,  see  Ellis,  '  Polyn.  Res'  vol.  ii.  p.  417. 
'  Virg.  iEiieid.  i.  66  ;  Homer.  Odys.  x.  1. 

•  Schoolcraft,  'Algic  Res.'  voL  i.  p.  200;  vol.  ii.  pp.  122,  214;  'Indian 
Tribes,'  part  iii.  p.  324. 


1 


,1)- 


*<• 


.\  > 


362 


MYTHOLOGY. 


!    '. 


races  of  America,  where  four  brother  heroes,  or  mythic  an- 
cestors or  divine  patrons  of  mankind,  prove,  on  closer  view, 
to  be  in  personal  shape  the  Four  Winds.^ 

The  Vedic  hymns  to  the  Maruts,  the  Storm  Winds,  who 
tear  asunder  the  forest  kings  and  make  the  rocks  shiver, 
and  assume  again,  after  their  wont,  the  form  of  new-born 
babes,  the  mythic  feats  of  the  child  Hermes  in  the  Homeric 
hymn,  the  legendary  birth  of  Boreas  from  Astraios  and  Eos, 
Starry  Heaven  and  Dawn,  work  cut,  on  Aryan  ground, 
mythic  conceptions  that  Red  Indian  tale-tellers  could 
understand  and  rival. ^  The  peasant  who  keeps  up  in  fire- 
side talk  the  memory  of  tlie  Wild  Huntsman,  Wodejager, 
the  Grand  Veneur  of  Fontainebleau,  Heme  the  Hunter  of 
Windsor  Forest,  has  almost  lost  the  significance  of  tliis 
grand  old  storm-myth.  By  mere  force  of  tradition,  the 
name  of  the  "Wish"  or  "  Wush "  hounds  of  the  Wild 
Huntsman  has  been  piuacrved  through  the  west  of  England; 
the  words  nmst  for  ages  past  have  lost  their  meaning  among 
the  countr}'^  folk,  though  we  may  plainly  recognize  in  them 
Woden's  ancient  well-known  name,  old  German  "  Wunsch." 
As  of  old,  the  Heaven-go^^^  drives  the  clouds  before  him  in 
raging  tempest  across  the  sky,  while,  ■  aft>  within  the  cottage 
"•vails,  the  tale-teller  unwittingly  describes  in  personal 
ndary  shape  this  same  Wild  Hunt  of  the  Storm.^ 
L  has  many  tu  time  occurred  to  the  savage  poet  or  philo- 
sopher to  realize  the  thunder,  or  its  cause,  in  myths  of  a 
Thunder-bird.  Of  this  wondrous  creature  North  American 
legend  has  much  to  tell.  He  is  the  bird  of  the  great 
Manitu,  as  the  eagle  is  of  Zeus,  or  he  is  even  the  great 
Manitu  himself  incarnate.     The  Assiniboins  not  only  know 

*  Brintoii,  '  Myths  of  the  New  World,'  ch.  iii, 

8  '  Rig- Veda,'  tr.  by  Max  MuUer,  vol.  i.  (Hymns  to  Maruts) ;  "Welckor, 
'  Griecli.  Gotterl.*  vol.  iii.  p.  ti7  ;  Cox,  '  Mythology  of  Aryan  Nations,'  vol.  iL 
ch.  V. 

3  Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  pp.  126,  699,  894  ;  Hunt,  '  Pop.  Rum.'  Ist  ser.  p.  xix.  ; 
Baring-Gould,  'Book  of  Werewolves,'  p.  101;  see  'Myths  of  the  Middle 
Ages,'  p.  25;  Wuttke,  'Deutsche  Volksaberglaube,'  pp.  13,  236;  Monnitr, 
'Traditions,'  pp.  75,  etc.,  741,  747. 


MTfTHOLOOY. 


803 


tio 

Br, 
)rn 
;ric 
ids, 
mcl, 
)uia 
fire- 
iger, 
er  of 
tills 
,  the 
Wild 
rland; 

UBOllg 

tliem 

.nscli.' 

ihn  iu 

ott!»ge 

ersonal 

pbilo- 

lis  of  a 
[nericaii 
great 
■xe  greivt 
ly  know 

.  Welckor, 
jns,'  vol.  u. 

ker.  p-  xi^- » 
[the  Midd^.o 


of  hie  existence,  but  have  even  seen  him,  and  in  the  far 
north  the  story  is  told  how  he  created  the  world.  The 
Ahts  of  Vancouver's  Island  talk  of  Tootooch,  the  mighty 
bird  dwelling  aloft  and  far  away,  the  flap  of  whose  wings 
makes  the  thunder  (Tootah),  and  his  tongue  is  the  forked 
lightning.  The^e  were  once  four  of  these  birds  in  the  land, 
and  they  fed  on  whales ;  but  the  great  deity  Quawteaht, 
entering  into  a  whale,  enticed  one  thunder-bird  after  another 
to  swoop  down  and  seize  him  with  its  talons,  when  plunging 
to  the  bottom  of  the  sea  he  drowned  it.  Thus  three  of  them 
perished,  but  the  last  one  spread  his  wings  and  fle^  ihe 
distant  height  where  he  has  since  remained.  The  meaning 
of  the  story  may  perhaps  be  that  thunderstorms  come 
especially  from  one  of  the  four  quarters  of  heaven.  Of  such 
myths,  perhaps  that  told  among  the  Dacotas  is  the 
quaintest :  Thunder  is  a  large  bird,  they  say ;  hence  its 
velocity.  The  old  bird  begins  the  thunder ;  its  rumbling 
noise  is  caused  b}"^  an  immense  quantity  of  young  birds,  or 
thunders,  who  continue  it,  hence  the  long  duration  of  the 
peals.  The  Indian  says  it  is  the  young  birds,  or  thunders, 
that  do  the  mischief;  they  are  like  the  young  mischievous 
men  who  will  not  listen  to  good  counsel.  The  old  thunder 
or  bird  is  wise  and  good,  and  does  not  kill  anybody,  nor  do 
any  kind  of  mischief.  Descending  southward  to  Central 
America,  there  is  found  mention  of  the  bird  Voc,  the 
messenger  of  Hurakan,  the  Tempest-god  (whose  name  has 
been  adopted  in  European  languages  as  huracano,  ouragan, 
hurricane)  of  the  Lightning  and  of  the  Thunder.  So  among 
Caribs,  Brazilians,  Harvey  Islanders  and  Karens,  Bechuanas 
and  Basutos,  we  find  legends  of  a  flapping  or  flashing 
Thunder-bird,  which  seem  simply  to  translate  into  myth 
the  thought  of  thunder  and  lightning  descending  from  the 
upi.er  regions  of  the  air,  the  home  of  the  eagle  and  the 
vulture.^ 

*  Pr.  Max  v.  Wied,  '  Reise  in  N.  A.'  vol.  i.  pp.  448,  455  ;  vol.  ii.  pp.  152, 
223;  Sir  Alex.  Mackenzie,  'Voyages,'  p.  cxvii.  ;  Sproat,  'Scenes  of  Savage 
Life'  (Vancouver's  I.),  p.  177,  213  ;  Irving,  'Astoria,'  vol.  iL  cli.  xxii.  ;  Le 


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364 


MYTHOLOGY. 


The  Heaven-god  dwells  in  the  regions  of  the  sky,  and 
thus  what  form  could  be  fitter  for  him  and  for  his  messengers 
than  the  likeness  of  a  bird  ?  But  to  cause  the  ground  to 
quake  beneath  our  feet,  a  being  of  quite  different  nature  is 
needed,  and  accordingly  the  office  of  supporting  the  solid 
earth  is  given  in  various  countries  to  various  monstrous 
creatures,  human  or  animal  in  character,  who  make  their 
office  manifest  from  time  to  time  by  a  shake  given  in 
negligence  or  sport  or  anger  to  their  burden.  Wherever 
earthquakes  are  felt,  we  are  likely  to  find  a  version  of  the 
great  myth  of  the  Earth-bearer.  Thus  in  Polynesia  the 
Tongans  say  that  Maui  upholds  the  earth  on  his  prostrate 
body,  and  when  he  tries  to  turn  over  into  an  easier  posture 
there  is  an  earthquake,  and  the  people  shout  and  beat  the 
ground  with  sticks  to  make  him  lie  still.  Another  version 
forms  part  of  the  interesting  myth  lately  mentioned,  which 
connects  the  under-world  whither  the  sur  descends  at  night, 
with  the  region  of  subterranean  volcanic  fire  and  of  earth- 
quake. The  old  j\Iaui  lay  by  his  fire  in  the  dead-land  of 
Bulutu,  when  his  grandson  Maui  came  down  by  the  cavern 
entrance ;  the  young  Maui  carried  off  the  fire,  they  wrestled, 
the  old  Maui  was  overcome,  and  has  lain  there  bruised  and 
drowsy  ever  since,  underneath  the  earth,  which  quakes 
when  he  turns  over  in  his  sleep.^  In  Celebes  we  hear  of 
the  world-supporting  Hog,  who  rubs  himself  against  a  tree, 
and  then  there  is  an  earthquake.^  Among  the  Indians  of 
North  America,  it  is  said  that  earthquakes  come  of  the 
movement  of  the  great  world-bearing  Tortoise.  Now  this 
Tortoise  seems  but  a  mythic  picture  of  the  Earth  itself, 


Jeune,  op,  cit.  1634,  p.  26;  Schoolcraft,  'Indian  Tribes,'  part  iii.  p.  233 
'  Algic  Res.' vol.  ii.  pp.  114-6,  199  ;  Catlin,  vol.  ii.  p.  164  ;  Brassenr,  '  Popol 
Vuh,' p.  71  and  Imlux,  '  Himiknn  ; '  J.  G.  Mu'.Kt,  '  Amer.  Urnd.' pp.  222. 
271;  Ellis,  '  Polyn.  Res.'  vol.  ii.  p.  417;  Jiio  Williams,  'Missionary  Enter- 
prise,' p.  93  ;  Mason,  1.  c.  p.  217  ;  iMoll'ut,  '  Soiilli  Al'rica,'  p.  338  ;  Casalis, 
'BasutoH,'  p.  266  ;  Callaway,  '  Relif.;ion  i)f  Aniazulu,'  p.  119. 

'  Mariner,   'Tonga  Is.'  vol.  ii.  p.  120;  S.  S.  Farmer,  'Tonga,'  p.  185; 
Schirren,  pp.  35-7. 

'  '  Joura.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol  ii.  p.  887. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


3Go 


and  thus  the  story  only  expresses  in  mythic  phrase  the  very 
fact  that  the  earth  quakes  ;  the  meaning  is  but  one  degreu 
less  distinct  than  among  the  Caribs,  who  say  when  there  is 
an  earthquake  that  their  Mother  Earth  is  dancing.^  Among 
the  higher  races  of  the  continent,  such  ideas  remain  little 
changed  in  nature  ;  the  Tlascalans  said  that  the  tired  world- 
supporting  deities  shifting  their  burden  to  a  new  relay 
caused  the  earthquake ;  ^  the  Chibchas  said  it  was  their 
god  Chibchacum  moving  the  earth  from  shoulder  to 
shoulder/  The  myth  ranges  in  Asia  tlirough  as  wide  a 
stretch  of  culture.  The  Kamchadals  tell  of  Tuil  the  Earth- 
quake-god. who  sledges  below  ground,  and  when  his  dog 
shakes  off"  fleas  or  snow  there  is  an  earthquake  ;  *  Ta  Ywa, 
the  solar  hero  of  the  Karens,  set  Shie-oo  beneath  the  earth 
to  carry  it,  and  there  is  an  earthquake  when  he  moves. ^ 
Tlie  world-bearing  elephants  of  the  Hindus,  the  world- 
supporting  frog  of  the  Mongol  Lamas,  the  world-bull  of  the 
Moslems,  the  gigantic  Omophore  of  the  Manichcean  cosmo- 
logy, are  all  creatures  who  carry  the  earth  on  their  backs  or 
heads,  and  shake  it  when  they  stretch  or  shift.^  Thus  in 
European  mythology  the  Scandinavian  Loki,  strapped  down 
with  thongs  of  iron  in  his  subterranean  cavern,  writhes 
when  the  overhanging  serpent  drops  venom  on  him;  or 
Prometheus  struggles  beneath  the  earth  to  break  his  bonds ; 
or  the  Lettish  Drebkuls  or  Poseidon  the  Earth-shaker 
makes  the  ground  rock  beneath  men's  feet.''  From 
thorough  myths  of  imagination  such  as  most  of  these,  it 
may  be  sometimes  possible  to  distinguish  philosophic  myths 
Vike  them    in  form,  but  which  appear  to  be  attempts    at 


,  233 
■  Topol 

|>p.  222. 
Enter- 

ICasalis, 

p.  ISSi 


'  J.  G.  Miiller,  'Amer.  Urielij,'.'  pp.  61,  122. 

*  Brasscur,  '  iM('xi(iuo,'  vol.  iii.  p.  432. 
»  Pouchet,  '  Fliu'iilily  of  Races,'  p.  2. 

*  Stellor,  'Kaintsclmtka,'  p.  207. 

*  Masoa,  '  Karens,'  1.  o.  p  182. 

*  Bell,  'Tr.  in  Asia'  in  Piiikcrton,  vol.  vii.  p.  369  ;  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asian,' 
voL  ii.  p.  16S  ;  Lane,  '  Thousand  and  one  Ni^'hts,'  vol.  i.  p.  21  j  see  Latham, 
'  Descr.  Eth.'  vol.  ii.  p.  171  ;  Beausobre,  '  Mauiuhee,'  vol.  L  p.  243. 

7  Edda^  ♦  Gylfaginuing,'  60    Grimm,  'D.  M.'  p.  777,  etc 


■I., 


366 


MYTHOLOGY. 


■■■  ,1 


serious  explanation  without  even  a  metaphor.  The  Japanese 
think  that  earthquakes  are  caused  by  huge  whales  creeping 
underground,  having  been  probably  led  to  this  idea  by 
finding  the  fossil  bones  which  seem  the  remains  of  such 
subterranean  monsters,  just  as  we  know  that  the  Siberians 
who  find  in  the  ground  the  mammoth-bones  and  tusks, 
account  for  them  as  belonging  to  huge  burrowing  beasts, 
and  by  force  of  this  belief,  have  brought  themselves  to  think 
they  can  sometimes  see  the  earth  heave  and  sink  as  the 
monsters  crawl  below.  Thus,  in  investigating  the  earth- 
quake-myths of  the  world,  it  appears  that  two  processes, 
the  translation  into  mythic  language  of  the  phenomenon 
itself,  and  the  crude  scientific  theory  to  ac>  ount  for  it  by  a 
real  moving  animal  underground,  may  result  in  legends  of 
very  striking  similarity.^ 

In  thus  surveying  the  mythic  wonders  of  heaven  and 
earth,  sun,  moon,  and  stars,  wind,  thunder,  and  earthquake, 
it  is  possible  to  set  out  in  investigation  under  conditions  of 
actual  certainty.  So  long  as  such  beings  as  Heaven  or  Sun 
are  consciously  talked  of  in  mythic  language,  the  meaning 
of  their  legends  is  open  to  no  question,  and  the  actions 
ascribed  to  them  will  as  a  rule  be  natural  and  apposite.  But 
when  the  phenomena  of  nature  take  a  more  anthropomorphic 
form,  and  become  identified  with  personal  gods  and  heroes, 
and  when  in  after  times  these  beings,  losing  their  first  con- 
sciousness of  origin,  become  centres  round  which  floating 
fancies  cluster,  then  their  sense  becomes  obscure  and  cor- 
rupt, and  the  consistency  of  their  earlier  character  must  no 
longer  be  demanded.  In  fact,  the  unreasonable  expectation 
of  such  consistency  in  nature-myths,  after  they  have  passed 
into  what  may  be  called  their  heroic  stage,  is  one  of  the 
mythologist's  most  damaging  errors.  The  present  exami- 
nation of  nature-myths  has  mostly  taken  them  in  their 
primitive  and  unmistakable  condition,  and  has  only  been 
in  some  degree  extended  to  include  closely-corresponding 

>  Kaempfer,  'Japan,'  iu  Piiikerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  684  ;  see  mammoth-myths  in 
'  Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,'  p.  316. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


367 


legends  in  a  less  easily  interpretable  state.  It  has  lain 
beyond  my  scope  to  enter  into  an}'  systematic  discussion  of 
the  views  of  Grimm,  Grote,  Max  Miiller,  Kuhn,  Schirren, 
Cox,  Breal,  Dasent,  Kelly,  and  other  mythologists.  Even 
the  outlines  here  sketched  out  have  been  purposely  left 
without  filling  in  surrounding  detail  which  might  confuse 
their  shape,  although  this  strictness  has  caused  the  neglect 
of  many  a  tempting  hint  to  work  out  episode  after  episode, 
by  tracing  their  relation  to  the  myths  of  far-off  times  and 
lands.  It  has  rather  been  my  object  to  bring  prominently 
into  view  the  nature-mythology  of  the  lower  races,  that  their 
clear  and  fresh  mythic  conceptions  may  serve  as  a  basis  in 
studying  the  nature-myths  of  the  world  at  large.  The 
evidence  and  interpretation  here  brought  forward,  imperfect 
as  they  are,  seem  to  countenance  a  strong  opinion  as  to  the 
historical  development  of  legends  which  describe  in  personal 
shape  the  life  of  nature.  The  state  of  mind  to  which  such 
imaginative  fictions  belong  is  found  in  full  vigour  in  the 
savag.  condition  of  mankind,  its  growth  and  inheritance 
continue  into  the  higher  culture  of  barbarous  or  half-civi- 
lized nations,  and  at  last  in  the  civilized  world  its  effects 
pass  more  and  more  from  realized  belief  into  fanciful, 
affected,  and  even  artificial  poetry. 


'',"i 


luythB  in 


Ei'!  ; 


CHAPTER   X. 


V  'n\ 


!   l\' 


n  i; 


n  i 


m 


■I-    '    i ; 


MYTHOLOGY  (contimted.) 

Philosophical  Myths :  inferences  become  pseudo-history— Geological  Myths 
—  Effect  of  doctrine  of  Miracles  on  Mythology — Magnetic  Mountain- 
Myths  of  relation  of  Apes  to  Men  by  development  or  degeneration  — 
Ethnological  import  of  mytlis  of  Ape-men,  Men  with  tails,  Men  of  the 
woods — Myths  of  Error,  Perversion,  and  Exaggeration  :  stories  of  Ginnts, 
Dwarfs,  and  Monstrous  Tribes  of  men — Fanciful  explanatory  Mytlis — 
Myths  attached  to  legendary  or  historical  Personages — Etymological 
Myths  on  names  of  [)Lices  and  persons— Eponymic  Myths  on  names  of 
tribes,  nations,  countries,  &c.  ;  their  ethnological  import— Pragmatic 
Myths  by  realization  of  metaphors  and  ideas — Allegory — Beast-Fable — 
Conclusion. 

Although  the  attempt  to  reduce  to  rule  and  system  the 
whole  domain  of  mythology  would  as  yet  be  rash  and  pre- 
mature, yet  the  piecemeal  invasion  of  one  mythic  province 
after  another  proves  feasible  and  profitable.  Having  dis- 
cussed the  theory  of  nature-myths,  it  is  worth  while  to  gain 
in  other  directions  glimpses  of  the  crude  and  child-like 
thought  of  mankind,  not  arranged  in  abstract  doctrines, 
but  embodied  by  mythic  fancy.  We  shall  find  the  result  in 
masses  of  legends,  full  of  interest  as  bearing  on  the  early 
history  of  opinion,  and  which  may  be  roughly  classified 
under  the  following  headings  :  myths  philosophical  or  ex- 
planatory; myths  based  on  real  descriptions  misunderstood, 
exaggerated,  or  perverted;  myths  attributing  inferred  events 
to  legendary  or  historical  personages ;  myths  based  on  reali- 
zation of  fanciful  metaphor ;  and  myths  made  or  adapted  to 
convey  moral  or  social  or  political  instruction. 

Man's  craving  to  know  the  causes  at  work  in  each  event 
he  witnesses,  the  reasons  why  each  state  of  things  he  sur- 


the 


mes, 
It  in 
jarly 
ified 
ex- 
;ood, 
ents 
eali- 
dto 

bvent 
svir- 


MYTHOLOGY. 


36!) 


veys  is  such  as  it  is  and  no  other,  is  no  product  of  higli 
civilization,  but  a  characteristic  of  his  race  down  to  its 
lowest  stages.  Among  rude  savages  it  is  already  an  intv']- 
lectual  appetite  whose  satisfaction  claims  many  of  the  hm- 
ments  not  engrossed  by  war  or  sport,  food  or  sleep.  Even 
to  the  Botocudo  or  Australian,  scientific  speculation  has  its 
germ  in  actual  experience :  he  has  learnt  to  do  definite  acts 
that  definite  results  may  follow,  to  see  other  acts  done  and 
their  results  following  in  course,  to  make  inference  from  the 
result  back  to  the  previous  action,  and  to  find  his  inference 
verified  in  fact.  When  one  daj'  he  has  seen  a  deer  or  a 
kangaroo  leave  footprints  in  the  soft  ground,  and  the  next 
day  he  has  found  new  footprints  and  inferred  that  such  an 
animal  made  them,  and  has  followed  up  the  track  and 
killed  the  game,  then  he  knows  that  he  has  reconstructed  a 
history  of  past  events  by  inference  from  their  results.  But 
in  the  early  stages  of  knowledge  the  confusion  is  extreme 
between  actual  tradition  of  events,  and  ideal  reconstruction 
of  them.  To  this  da}'  there  go  about  the  world  endless 
stories  told  as  matter  of  known  reality,  but  which  a  critical 
examination  shows  to  be  mere  inferences,  often  utterly  illu- 
sory ones,  from  facts  which  have  stimulated  the  invention  of 
some  curious  enquirer.  Thus  a  writer  in  the  Asiatick  Re- 
searches of  some  eighty  years  ago  relates  the  following 
account  of  the  Andaman  islanders,  as  a  historical  fact  of 
which  he  had  been  informed :  "  Shortly  after  the  Portu- 
uese  had  discovered  the  passage  to  India  round  the  Capo 
of  Good  Hope,  one  of  their  ships,  on  board  of  which  were 
a  number  of  Mozambique  negroes,  was  lost  on  the  Andaman 
islands,  which  were  till  then  uninhabited.  The  blacks  re- 
mained in  the  island  and  settled  it :  the  Europeans  made  a 
small  shallop  in  which  they  sailed  to  Pegu."  Many  readers 
must  have  had  their  interest  excited  by  this  curious  story, 
but  at  the  first  touch  of  fact  it  dissolves  into  a  philosophic 
myth,  made  by  the  easy  transition  from  what  might  have 
been  to  what  was.  So  far  from  the  islands  having  been 
uninhabited  at  the  time  of  Vasco  de  Gama's  voyage,  their 


-! 


I-; 


VOL.  I. 


B   U 


370 


MYTHOLOOT. 


-I*: 


'% 


:i'l 


population  of  naked  blacks  with  frizzled  hair  had  been  de 
scribed  six  hundred  years  earlier,  and  the  story,  which 
sounded  reasonable  to  people  puzzled  by  the  appearance  of 
R  black  population  in  the  Andaman  islands,  is  of  course 
repudiated  by  ethnologists  aware  of  the  wide  distribution 
of  the  negroid  Papuans,  really  so  distinct  from  any  race  of 
African  negroes.^  Not  long  since,  I  met  with  a  very  perfect 
myth  of  this  kind.  In  a  brick  field  near  London,  there  had 
been  found  a  number  of  fossil  elephant  bones,  and  soon 
afterwards  a  stor}'-  was  in  circulation  in  the  neighbourhood 
somewhat  in  this  shape  :  '*  A  few  years  ago,  one  of  Womb- 
well's  caravans  was  here,  an  elephant  died,  and  they  buried 
him  in  the  field,  and  now  the  scientific  gentlemen  have 
found  his  bones,  and  think  they  have  got  a  prse -Adamite 
elephant."  It  seemed  almost  cruel  to  spoil  this  ingenious 
myth  by  pointing  out  that  such  a  prize  as  a  living  mam- 
moth was  beyond  the  resources  even  of  Wombwell's  me- 
nagerie. But  so  exactly  does  such  a  story  explain  the  facts 
to  minds  not  troubled  with  nice  distinctions  between  ex- 
isting and  extinct  species  of  elephants,  that  it  was  on 
another  occasion  invented  elsewhere  under  similar  circum- 
stances. This  was  at  Oxford,  where  Mr.  Buckland  found 
the  story  of  the  Wombwell's  caravan  and  dead  elephant 
current  to  explain  a  similar  find  of  fossil  bones.*  Such 
explanations  of  the  finding  of  fossils  are  easily  devised  and 
used  to  be  freely  made,  as  when  fossil  bones  found  in  the 
Alps  were  set  down  to  Hannibal's  elephants,  or  when  a 
petrified  oyster-shell  near  the  Mount  Cenis  sets  Voltaire 
reflecting  on  the  crowd  of  pilgrims  on  their  way  to  Borne, 
or  when  theologians  supposed  such  shells  on  mountains  to 
have  been  left  on  their  slopes  and  summits  by  a  rising  deluge. 
Such  theoretical  explanations  are  unimpeachable  in  their 
philosophic  spirit,  until  further  observation  may  prove  them 


ff  i 


'  Hamilton  in  '  As.  Res.'  vol.  ii.  p.  344  ;  Colebrooke,  ibid.  vol.  iv.  p.  385 ; 
Earl  in  '  Journ.  Ind.  Archip. '  vol.  iii.  p.  682  ;  Tol.  iv.  p.  9.     See  Renaudot^ 
Travels  of  Two  Mahoniniedans,'  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  183. 
'  F.  Buckland,  '  Curiosities  of  Nat.  Hist.'  3rd  series,  vol.  ii.  p.  39. 


11 


MYTnOT,OGT. 


371 


to  be  unsound.  Their  disusti-ous  effect  on  the  historic 
conscience  of  mankind  only  begins  when  the  inference  is 
turned  upside  down,  to  be  told  as  a  recorded  fact. 

In  this  connexion  brief  notice  may  be  taken  of  the  doc- 
trine of  miracles  in  its  special  bearing  on  mythology.  The 
mythic  wonder-episodes  related  by  a  savage  tale-teller,  the 
amazing  superhuman  feats  of  his  gods  and  lieroes,  are  often 
to  his  mind  miracles  in  the  original  popular  sense  of  tho 
word,  that  is,  they  are  strange  and  marvellous  events  ;  but 
they  are  not  to  his  mind  miracles  in  a  freiiucnt  modern 
sense  of  the  word,  that  is,  they  are  not  violations  or  super- 
sessions of  recognized  laws  of  nature.  Exceptio  probat 
regulam ;  to  acknowledge  anything  as  an  exception  is  to 
imply  the  rule  it  departs  from ;  but  the  savage  recognizes 
neither  rule  nor  exception.  Yet  a  European  hearer,  brought 
up  to  use  a  different  canon  of  evidence,  will  calmly  reject 
this  savage's  most  revered  ancestral  traditions,  simply  on 
the  ground  that  they  relate  events  which  are  impossible. 
The  ordinary  standards  of  possibilit}',  as  applied  to  the 
credibility  of  tradition,  have  indeed  changed  vastly  in  the 
course  of  culture  through  its  savage,  barbaric,  and  civilized 
stages.  What  concerns  us  here  is  that  there  is  an  important 
department  of  legend  which  this  chang?  in  public  opinion, 
generally  so  resistless,  left  to  a  great  f  -  ';,mt  unaltered.  In 
the  middle  ages  the  long-accepted  practie .;  rose  to  its  height, 
of  allowing  the  mere  assertion  of  supernatural  influence  by 
angels  or  devils,  saints  or  sorcerers,  to  override  the  rules  of 
evidence  and  the  results  of  experience.  The  consequence 
was  that  the  doctrine  of  miracles  became  as  it  were  a  bridge 
along  which  mythology  travelled  from  the  lower  into  tlie 
higher  culture.  Principles  of  myth-formation  belonging 
properly  to  the  mental  state  of  the  savage,  were  by  its  aid 
continued  in  strong  action  in  the  civilized  world.  Mythic 
episodes  which  Europeans  would  have  rejected  contemptu- 
ously if  tojd  of  savage  deities  or  heroes,  only  required 
to  be  adapted  to  appropriate  local  details,  and  to  be  set 
forth  as   miracles  in  the   life  ot    some   superhuman   per- 

B   B  2 


'tl 


^1 


i         I!" 


I 


;?■ 


S72 


MYTHOLOGY. 


1'.  . ;     ■«/ 


ti;. 


:-   ^ 


*  ;; 


■4 


son.'ige,  to  obtain  as  of  old  a  place  of  credit  and  honoui*  in 
history. 

From  the  enormous  mass  of  available  instances  in  proof 
of  this  let  us  take  two  cases  belonging  to  the  class  of 
geological  myths.  The  first  is  the  well-known  legend  of 
St.  Patrick  and  the  serpents.  It  is  thus  given  by  Dr. 
Andrew  Boorde  in  his  description  of  Ireland  and  the  Irish 
in  Henry  VIII.'s  time.  **  Yet  in  lerland  is  stupendyous 
tl'vnges ;  for  there  is  neyther  Pyes  nor  venymus  wormes. 
There  is  no  Adder,  nor  Snake,  nor  Toode,  nor  Lyzerd,  nor 
no  Euyt,  nor  none  such  lyke.  I  haue  sene  stones  the  whiche 
haue  had  the  forme  and  shap  of  a  snake  and  other  venimus 
wormes.  And  the  people  of  the  countre  sayth  that  suche 
stones  were  wormes,  and  they  were  turned  into  stones  by  the 
power  of  God  and  the  prayers  of  saynt  Patryk.  And 
Englysh  marchauntes  of  England  do  fetch  of  the  erth  of 
Irlonde  to  caste  in  their  gardens,  to  kepe  out  and  to  kyll 
venimus  wormes."  ^  In  treating  this  passage,  the  first  step 
is  to  separate  pieces  of  imported  foreign  myth,  belonging 
properly  not  to  Ireland,  but  to  islands  of  the  Mediterranean  ; 
the  story  of  the  earth  of  the  island  of  Krete  being  fatal  to 
venomous  serpents  is  to  be  found  in  iElian,^  and  St. 
Honoratus  clearing  the  snakes  from  his  island  (one  of  the 
Lerins  opposite  Cannes)^  seems  to  take  precedence  of  the 
Irish  saint.  What  is  left  after  these  deductions  is  a  philo- 
Bophic  myth  accounting  for  the  existence  of  fossil  ammonites 
as  being  petrified  snakes,  to  which  myth  a  historical  position 
is  given  by  claiming  it  as  a  miracle,  and  ascribing  it  to  St. 
Patrick.  The  second  myth  is  valuable  for  the  historical  and 
geological  evidence  which  it  incidentally  preserves.  At 
the  celebrated  ruins  of  the  temple  of  Jupiter  Serapis  at 
Pozzuoli,  the  ancient  Puteoli,  the  marble  columns,  encircled 
half-way  up  by  borings  of  lithodomi,  stand  to  prove  that  the 
ground  of  the  temple  must  have  been  formerly  submerged 

'  Andrew  Boorde,   'Introduction  of  Knowledge,'  ed.  by  F.  J.  FurnivaU* 
Early  P:ng.  Text  Soc.  1870,  p.  133. 
^  iEliaii,  De  Nat.  Animal,  v.  2,  see  8. 
•  Acta  Sanctorum  Bolland.  Jan.  xvi. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


373 


an; 
alto 

St. 

the 

the 
lilo- 
nites 
ition 
o  St. 

and 
At 
is  at 

cled 
it  the 

rged 

nivallt 


r 


many  feet  below  the  sea,  and  afterwards  upheaved  to  become 
again  dry  land.  History  is  remarkably  silent  as  to  the  events 
demonstrated  by  this  remarkable  geological  evidence  ;  be- 
tween the  recorded  adornment  of  the  temple  by  Roman 
emperors  from  the  second  to  the  third  century,  and  the 
mention  of  its  existence  in  ruins  in  the  16th  century',  no  docu- 
mentary information  was  till  lately  recognized.  It  has  now 
been  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Tuckett  that  a  passage  in  the 
Apocryphal  Acts  of  Peter  and  Paul,  dating  apparently  more 
or  less  before  the  end  of  the  9th  century,  mentions  the  sub- 
sidence of  the  temple,  ascribing  it  to  a  miracle  of  St.  Paul. 
The  legend  is  as  follows :  **  And  when  he  (Paul)  came  out  of 
Messi.ia  he  sailed  to  Didymus,  and  remained  there  one  night. 
And  having  sailed  thence,  he  came  to  Pontiole  (Puteoli)  on 
the  second  day.  And  Dioscorus  the  shipmaster,  who  brought 
him  to  Syracuse,  sympathizing  with  Paul  because  he  had 
delivered  his  son  from  death,  having  left  his  own  ship  in 
Syracuse,  accompanied  him  to  Pontiole.  And  some  of  Peter's 
disciples  having  been  found  there,  and  having  received  Paul, 
exhorted  him  to  stay  with  them.  And  he  stayed  a  week  in 
hiding,  because  of  the  command  of  Caesar  (that  he  should 
be  put  to  death).  And  all  the  toparchs  were  waiting  to  seize 
and  kill  him.  But  Dioscorus  the  shipmaster,  being  himself 
also  bald,  wearing  his  shipmaster's  dress,  and  speaking 
boldly,  on  the  first  day  went  out  into  the  city  of  Pontiole. 
Thinking  therefore  that  he  was  Paul,  they  seized  him  and 

beheaded  him,  and  sent  his  head  to  Caesar And  Paul, 

being  in  Pontiole,  and  having  heard  that  Dioscorus  had  been 
beheaded,  being  grieved  with  great  grief,  gazing  into  the 
height  of  the  heaven,  said  :  *  O  Lord  Almighty  in  Heaven, 
who  hast  appeared  to  me  in  every  place  whither  I  have  gone 
on  account  of  Thine  only-begotten  Word,  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  punish  this  city,  and  bring  out  all  who  have  believed 
in  God  and  followed  His  word.*  He  said  to  them,  there- 
fore, *  Follow  me.*  And  going  forth  from  Pontiole  with  those 
who  had  believed  in  the  word  of  God,  they  came  to  a  place 
'Called  Baias  (Baiae),  and  looking  up  with  their  eyes,  they  all 


'     ' ; 


374 


MTTnOLOGT. 


i    I 


I '  I  ! 


■|     S 


m 


I  I ,  ■'; 


see  that  city  called  Pontiole  sunk  into  the  sea-shore  about 
one  fathom ;  and  there  it  ia  until  this  day,  for  a  remem- 
brance, under  the  sea.  .  .  .  And  those  who  had  been  saved 
out  of  the  city  of  Pontiole,  that  had  been  swallowed  up, 
reported  to  Ctesar  in  Rome  that  Pontiole  had  been  swal* 
lowed  up  with  all  its  multitude."  ^ 

Episodes  of  popular  myth,  which  are  often  items  of  the 
serious  belief  of  the  times  they  belong  to,  may  serve  as  im- 
portant records  of  intellectual  history.  As  an  example 
belonging  to  the  class  of  philosophical  or  explanatory  myths, 
let  us  glance  at  an  Arabian  Nights'  story,  which  at  first 
sight  may  seem  an  effort  of  the  wildest  imagination,  but 
which  is  nevertheless  traceable  to  a  scientific  origin  ;  this  is 
the  story  of  the  Magnetic  Mountain.  The  Third  Kalenter 
relates  in  his  tale  how  a  contrary'  wind  drove  his  ships  into  a 
strange  sea,  and  there,  by  the  attraction  of  their  nails  and 
other  ironwork,  they  were  violently  drawn  towards  a  moun- 
tain of  black  loadstone,  till  at  last  the  iron  flew  out  to  the 
mountain,  and  the  ships  went  to  pieces  in  the  surf.  The 
episode  is  older  than  the  date  when  the  *  Thousand  and  One 
Nights '  were  edited.  When,  in  Henry  of  Veldeck's  12tli 
century  poem,  Duke  Ernest  and  his  companions  sail  into 
the  Klebermeer,  they  see  the  rock  that  is  called  Magnes, 
and  are  themselves  dragged  in  below  it  among  "  many  a 
work  of  keels,"  whose  masts  stand  like  a  forest.^  Turning 
fi.'om  tale-tellers  to  grave  geographers  and  travellers  who  talk 
of  the  loadstone  mountain,  we  find  El  Kazwini,  like  Serapion 
before  him,  believing  such  boats  as  may  be  still  seen  in 
Ceylon,  pegged  and  sewn  without  metal  nails,  to  be  so  built 
lest  the  magnetic  rock  should  attract  them  from  their  course 
at  sea.     This  quaint  notion  is  to  be  found  in  Sir  John 


1  'Acts  of  Peter  and  Paul,'  tran&  by  A,  Walker,  in  Ante-Nicene  Library, 
vol.  xvi,  p.  257  ;  F.  R  Tuckett  in  '  Nature,'  Oct.  20,  1870.  .See  Lyell, 
'Principles  of  Geology,'  oh.  xxx.  ;  Phillips,  "Vesuvius,'  p.  244. 

2  Lane,  '  Thousand  and  One  N.'  vol.  i.  pp.  161,  217  ;  voL  iii.  p.  78 ;  Hole, 
•Remarks  on  the  Ar.  N.'  p.  104  ;  Heinrich  von  Veldeck,  '  Herzog  Ernst's 
von  Hayern  Erholiung,  etc'  ed.  Kixiier,  Amberg,  1830,  p.  65  ;  see  Ludlow, 
•  Popular  Epics  of  Middle  Ages,'  p.  221. 


MVTHOLOOY. 


37.^ 


L-ning 
talk 

apion 

sen  in 
built 

iourse 
John 

jibrary, 
LyeU, 

;  Hole, 

Ernst's 

Ludlow, 


Mnndeville  :  "  In  an  isle  clept  Oinies,  ben  schippes  with- 
outen  nayles  of  iren,  or  bonds,  for  the  rockes  of  the 
adamandes  ;  for  they  ben  alle  fulle  there  aboute  in  that  see, 
that  it  is  niiirveyle  to  spaken  of.  And  gif  a  schipp  passed 
by  the  marches,  and  hadde  either  iren  bandcs  or  iren  nayles, 
anon  he  sholde  ben  perishet.  For  the  adamande  of  this 
kinde  draws  the  iren  to  him  ;  and  so  wolde  it  draw  to  him 
the  schipp,  because  of  the  iren ;  that  he  sholde  never 
departen  fro  it,  ne  never  go  thens."  ^  Now  it  seems  that 
accounts  of  the  mngnetic  mountain  have  been  given  not  only 
as  belonging  to  the  southern  seas,  but  also  to  the  north, 
and  that  men  have  connected  with  such  notions  the  point- 
ing of  the  magnetic  needle,  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne  says, 
**  ascribing  thereto  the  cause  of  the  needle's  direction,  and 
conceeving  the  effluxions  from  these  mountains  and  rocks 
invite  the  lilly  toward  the  north."  ^  On  this  evidence  we 
liave,  I  think,  fair  ground  for  supposing  that  hypotheses  of 
polar  magnetic  mountains  were  first  devised  to  explain  the 
action  of  the  compass,  and  that  these  gave  rise  to  stories  of 
such  mountains  exerting  wliat  would  be  considered  their 
proper  effect  on  the  iron  of  passing  ships.  Tlie  argument 
is  clenched  by  the  consideration  that  Europeans,  who 
colloquially  say  the  needle  points  to  the  north,  naturally 
required  their  loadstone  mountain  inhigli  northern  latitudes, 
while  on  the  other  hand  it  was  as  natural  that  Orientals 
should  place  this  wondrous  rock  in  the  south,  for  they  say 
it  is  to  the  south  that  the  needle  points.  The  concep- 
tion of  magnetism  among  peoples  who  had  not  reached  the 
idea  of  double  polarity  may  be  gathered  from  the  followi  /g 
quaint  remarks  in  the  17th  century  cyclopaedia  of  the  Chinese 
emperor  Kang-hi.  "  I  now  hear  the  Europeans  say  it  is 
towards  the  North  pole  that  the  compass  turns  ;  the  ancients 
said  it  was  toward  the  South ;  which  have  judged  most 
rightly  ?  Since  neither  give  any  reason  why,  we  come  to  no 
more  with  the  one   side   than  with  the  other.      Bat  the 

*  Sir  John  Manndevile,  '  Voiage  and  Travaile.' 

•  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  '  Vulgar  Errours,'  ii.  3. 


'  ['I 


■la 


^i, 


!    i 


i\'i 


.1 


11' '1' 

in:. 


II 


'  I 


')      (■ 


r   I 


m^ 

,'i: 


■I' 


:m 


MYTHOLOGY. 


ancientvS  are  the  earlier  in  date,  and  the  farther  I  go  the  mora 
I  perceive  that  they  understood  the  mechanism  of  natm'e. 
All  movement  languishes  and  dies  in  projiortion  as  it 
approaches  the  north ;  it  is  hard  to  helieve  it  to  be  from 
thence  that  the  movement  of  the  magnetic  needle  comes."  * 

To  suppose  tliat  theories  of  a  relation  between  man  and 
the  lower  mammalia  are  only  a  product  of  advanced  science, 
would  be  an  extreme  mistake.  Even  at  low  levels  of  culture, 
men  addicted  to  speculative  philosophy  have  been  led  to 
account  for  the  resemblance  between  apes  and  themselves  by 
solutions  satisfactory  to  their  own  minds,  but  which  we  must 
class  as  philosophic  myths.  Among  these,  stories  which 
embody  the  th^uglit  of  an  upward  change  from  ape  to  man, 
more  or  less  approaching  the  last-century  theory  oi  develop- 
ment, are  to  be  found  side  by  side  with  others  which  in  the 
converse  way  account  for  apes  as  degenerate  from  a  previous 
human  state. 

Central  American  mythology  works  out  the  idea  that 
monkeys  were  once  a  human  race.^  In  South-East  Africa, 
I'athtr  Dos  Santos  remarked  long  since  that  "  they  hold 
that  the  apes  were  anciently  men  and  women,  and  thus  they 
call  them  in  their  tongue  the  first  people."  The  Zulus  still 
tell  the  tale  of  an  Amafeme  tribe  who  became  baboons. 
They  were  an  idle  race  who  did  not  like  to  dig,  but  wished 
to  eat  at  other  people's  houses,  saying,  "  We  shall  live, 
although  we  do  not  dig,  if  we  eat  the  food  of  those  who 
cultivate  the  soil."  So  the  chief  of  that  place,  of  the  house 
of  Tusi,  assembled  the  tribe,  and  they  prepared  food  and 
went  out  into  the  wilderness.    They  fastened  on  behind  them 

'  '  Mcmoires  cone.  I'llist.,  etc.,  des  Chinois,'  vol.  iv.  p.  457.  Compare  the 
6toiy  ot  the  iiiaijiietic  (1)  Iiorscnmn  in  'Thousand  and  One  N.'  vol.  iii.  p.  119, 
with  the  old  Chinese  mention  of  magnetic  cars  with  a  movable-armed  point- 
ing tiyure,  A.  v.  Humboldt,  '  Asie  Centralo,'  vol.  i.  p.  xL  ;  Goguet,  vol.  iii. 
p.  284.  (The  loadstone  mountain  has  its  power  from  a  horseman  on  the  top 
with  brazen  liorse. ) 

*  Brasseur, '  Popol  Vuh,'  pp.  23-31.    Compare  this  Central  American  myth 
of  the  ancient  senseless  mannikins  who  became  monkeys,  with  a  Pottowatom 
legend  in  Schoolcraft,  'Indian  Tribes,*  part  L  p.  320. 


MYTHOLOOY, 


377 


Ipaie  the 
p.  119, 
point- 
vol.  iii. 
the  top 

in  myth 
lowatom 


the  handles  of  their  now  useless  digging  picks,  these  grew 
and  became  tails,  hair  made  its  appearance  on  their  bodies, 
their  foreheads  became  overhanging,  and  so  they  bocame 
baboons,  who  are  still  called  "  Tusi's  men."i  Mr.  Kingsley's 
stor}'  of  the  great  and  famous  nation  of  the  Doasyoulikes, 
who  degenerated  by  natural  selection  into  gorillas,  is  the 
civilized  counterpart  of  this  savage  myth.  Or  monkeys  may 
be  transformed  aborigines,  as  the  Mbocobis  relate  in  South 
America :  in  the  great  conflagration  of  their  forests  a  man 
and  woman  climbed  a  tree  for  refuge  from  the  fier}'  deluge, 
but  the  flames  singed  their  faces  and  they  became  apes.^ 
Among  more  civilized  nations  these  fancies  have  gra})hic 
representatives  in  Moslem  legends,  of  which  one  is  as 
follows : — There  was  a  Jewish  city  which  stood  by  a  river 
full  offish,  but  the  cunning  creatures,  noticing  the  habits  of 
the  citizens,  ventured  freely  in  sight  on  the  Sabbath,  though 
they  carefully  kept  away  on  working-days.  At  last  the 
temptation  was  too  strong  for  the  Jewish  fishermen,  but 
they  paid  dearly  for  a  few  days'  fine  sport  by  being  miracu- 
lously turned  into  apes  as  a  punishment  for  Sabbath-breaking. 
In  after  times,  when  Solomon  passed  through  the  Valley  of 
Apes,  between  Jerusalem  and  Mareb,  he  received  from  their 
descendants,  monkeys  living  in  houses  and  dressed  like  men, 
an  account  of  their  strange  history.'  So,  in  classic  times, 
Jove  had  chastised  the  treacherous  race  of  the  Cercopcs ; 
he  took  from  them  the  use  of  tongues,  bom  but  to  perjure, 
leaving  them  to  bewail  in  hoarse  cries  their  fate,  transformed 
into  the  hairy  apes  of  the  Pithecusee,  like  and  yet  unlike  the 
men  they  had  been : — 

'•  In  di'forme  viros  animal  mutavit,  ut  idem 
Dissimiles  homini  possont  sirailesquo  vitleri."  * 

•  Dos  Santos,  '  Ethiopia  Orientiil ';  Evora,  1601),  part  i.  chap.  ix. ;  Callaway, 
'Zulu  Tales,'  vol.  i.  p.  177.  See  also  Burton,  •Footsteps  in  E.  Afr.'  p.  274  ; 
Waitz,  *  Antliro])olofrio,'  vol.  ii.  p.  178  (W.  Afr.). 

^  D'Orbigny,  '  L'Hoiiiino  Anioricain,'  voL  ii.  p.  102. 

•  Weil,  '  Bil)].  Loi,'.  iler  Mii.scliiiaiiiuT.'p.  267  ;  Lane,  'Thousand  and  Ona 
N.'  vol.  iii.  p.  350  ;  Burton,  '  El  Mediiiah,  etc'  vol.  ii.  p.  343. 

•  Ovid,  'Metarani.'  xiv.  89-100  ;  Welcker,  '  Griechische  Gotterlelire,  Tol.iiL 
.108. 


Ill 


M 


v■^, 


I  !• , 


378 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I  , 


III 


ii-  .■ 


'      'sr' 


tr'fcii 


Turning  from  degeneration  to  development,  it  is  found 
that  legends  of  the  descent  of  human  tribes  from  apes  are 
especially  applied  to  races  despised  as  low  and  beast-like  by 
some  higher  neighbouring  people,  and  the  low  race  may 
even  acknowledge  the  humiliating  explanation.  Thus  the 
aboriginal  features  of  the  robber-caste  of  the  Marawars  of 
South  India  are  the  justification  for  their  alleged  descent 
from  llama's  monkeys,  as  for  the  like  genealogy  of  the 
Kathkuri,  or  catechu-gatherers,  which  these  small,  dark, 
low-browed,  curly-haired  tril)es  actually  themselves  believe 
in.  The  Jaitwas  of  liajputana,  a  tribe  reckoned  politically 
as  Rajputs,  nevertheless  trace  their  descent  from  the 
monkey-god  Hanuman,  and  confirm  it  by  alleging  that  their 
princes  still  bear  its  evidence  in  a  tail-like  prolongation  of 
the  spine  ;  a  tradition  which  has  probably  a  real  ethnolo- 
gical meaning,  pointing  out  the  Jaitwas  as  of  non-Aryan 
race.^  Wild  tribes  of  the  Malay  peninsula,  looked  down  on 
as  lower  animals  by  the  more  warlike  and  civilized  Malays, 
have  among  them  traditions  of  their  own  descent  from  a 
pair  of  the  "  unka  puteh,"  or  "  white  monkeys,"  who  reared 
their  young  ones  and  sent  them  into  the  plains,  and  there 
they  perfected  so  well  that  they  and  their  descendants 
became  men,  but  those  who  returned  to  the  mountains  still 
remained  apes.^  Thus  Buddhist  legend  relates  the  origin 
of  the  flat-nosed,  uncouth  tribes  of  Tibet,  oft'si)ring  of  two 
miraculous  apes,  transformed  to  people  the  snow-kingdom. 
Taught  to  till  the  ground,  when  they  had  grown  corn  and 
eaten  it,  their  tails  and  hair  gradually  disappeared,  they 
began  to  speak,  became  men,  and  clothed  themselves  with 
leaves.  The  population  grew  closer,  the  land  was  more  and 
more  cultivated,  and  at  last  a  prince  of  the  race  of  Sakya, 
driven  from  his  home  in  India,  united  their  isolated  tribes 
into  a  single  kingdom.^     In  these  traditions  the  develop- 

'  Campbell  in  *Journ.  As.  Soc.  Bciipil,'  1866,  part  ii.  p.  132  ;  Latham, 
'  Descr.  Kth.'  vol.  ii.  p.  456  ;  Tod,  '  Annals  of  Kitjiisthan,'  vol.  i.  p.  114. 

'  Bouiien  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  73  ;  see  '  Jouni.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  IL 
p.  271. 

*  Bastian,   'Oestl.  Asii'n,'  vol.  iii.  p.  435  ;  'Mensch,  vol.  iii.  pp.  347,  349, 


MYTHOLOaT. 


371) 


ment  from  ape  to  man  is  considered  to  have  come  in  suc- 
cessive generations,  but  the  negroes  are  said  to  attain  the 
result  in  the  individual,  by  way  of  metempsychosis.  Froebel 
speaks  of  negro  slaves  in  the  United  States  believing  that 
in  the  next  world  they  shall  be  white  men  and  free,  nor  is 
there  anything  strange  in  their  cherishing  a  hope  so  pre- 
valent among  their  kindred  in  West  Africa.  But  from  this 
the  traveller  goes  on  to  quote  another  story,  which,  if  not 
too  good  to  be  true,  is  a  theory  of  upward  and  downward 
development,  almost  thorough  enougli  for  a  Buddhist  philo- 
sopher. He  says,  **  A  German  whom  I  met  here  told  me 
that  the  blacks  believe  the  damned  among  the  negroes  to 
become  monkeys  ;  but  if  in  this  state  they  behave  well,  they 
are  advanced  to  the  state  of  a  negro  again,  and  bliss  is  event- 
ually possible  to  them,  consisting  in  their  turning  white, 
becoming  winged,  and  so  on."  ^ 

To  understand  these  stories  (and  they  are  worth  some 
attention  for  the  ethnological  hints  they  contain),  it  is  neces- 
sary that  we  should  discard  the  results  of  modern  scientific 
zoology,  and  bring  our  minds  back  to  a  ruder  condition  of 
knowledge.  The  myths  of  human  degeneration  and  develop- 
ment have  much  more  in  common  with  the  speculations  of 
Lord  Monboddo  than  with  the  anatomical  arguments  of 
Professor  Huxley.  On  the  one  hand,  uncivilized  men 
deliberately  assign  to  apes  an  amount  of  human  quality 
which  to  modern  naturalists  is  simply  ridiculous.  Everyone 
has  heard  the  story  of  the  negroes  declaring  that  apes  really 
can  speak,  but  judiciously  hold  their  tongues  lest  they 
should  be  made  to  work  ;  but  it  is  not  so  generally  known  that 
this  is  found  as  serious  matter  of  belief  in  several  distant 
regions — West  Africa,  Madagascar,  South  America,  &c. — 
where  monkeys  or  apes  are  found.^    With  this  goes  another 

387;  Koeppen,  vol.  ii.  p.  44;  J.  J.  Schmidt,  'Volker  Mittel-Asiens,'  p. 
210. 

'  Froebel,  'Central  America,'  p.  220  ;  see  Bosman,  '  Guinea,'  in  Pinkerton, 
vol.  xvi.  p.  401.  For  other  traditions  of  human  descent  from  apes,  see 
Farrar,  '  Chapters  on  Language,'  p.  45. 

*  Bosman,  'Guinea,'  p.  440  ;  Wait/,  vol.  ii.  p.  178  ;  Cauche,  'Relation  de 


il 


;  I 


if  / 


\'1 


li''l 


380 


MYTHOLOGY. 


widely-spread  anthropoid  story,  which  relates  how  great 
apes  like  the  gorilla  and  the  orang-utan  carry  off  women 
to  their  homes  in  the  woods,  much  as  the  Apaches  and 
Comanches  of  our  own  time  carry  off  to  their  prairies 
the  women  of  North  Mexico.^  And  on  the  other  hand, 
popular  opinion  has  under-estimated  the  man  as  much  as  it 
has  over-estimated  the  monkey.  We  know  how  sailors  and 
emigrants  can  look  on  savages  as  senseless,  ape-like  brutes, 
and  how  some  writers  on  anthropology  have  contrived  to 
make  out  of  the  moderate  intellectual  difference  between  an 
Englishman  and  a  negro  something  equivalent  to  the  im- 
mense interval  between  a  negro  and  a  gorilla.  Thus  we 
can  have  no  difficulty  in  understanding  how  savages  may 
seem  mere  apes  to  the  eyes  of  men  who  hunt  them  like  wild 
beasts  in  the  forests,  who  can  only  hear  in  their  language  a 
sort  of  irrational  gurgling  and  barking,  and  who  fail  totally 
to  apprecinte  the  real  culture  which  better  acquaintance 
always  shows  among  the  rudest  tribes  of  man.  It  is  well 
known  that  when  Sanskrit  legend  tells  of  the  apes  who 
fought  in  the  army  of  King  Hanuman,  it  really  refers  to 
those  aborigines  of  the  land  who  were  driven  by  the  Aryan 
invaders  to  the  hills  and  jungles,  and  whose  descendants  are 
known  to  us  as  Bhils,  Kols,  Sonthals,  and  the  like,  rude 
tribes  such  as  the  Hindu  still  speaks  of  as  '*  monkey- 
people."  ^  One  of  the  most  perfect  identifications  of  the 
savage  and  the  monkey  in  Hindustan  is  the  following  de- 
scription of  the  hnnmanus,  or  "  man  of  the  woods  "  (Sanskr. 
vana  —  wood,  mnnusha  =  man).  *'  The  hnnmanus  is  an  animal 
of  the  monlcey  kind.     His  face  has  a  near  resemblance  to 


Madagnscar,'  p.  127 ;  Dobrizhoffer,  *  Alnpoues,'  vol.  i.  p.  288 ;  Bastian, 
'  Men»ich,'  vol.  ii.  p.  44  ;  Ponchet,  '  Pluntlity  of  Hmnan  Race,'  p.  22. 

'  Monboddo,  '  Origin  and  Progress  of  Lang '  2iid  ed.  vol.  i.  p.  277  ;  Du 
Chaillu,  '  Kijuatorial  Africa,'  p.  61  ;  St.  John,  'Forests  of  Far  East,' vol.  i. 
p.  17  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  239. 

*  Max  Miiller  in  Bansen,  'Phil,  Univ.  Hist.' vol,  i.  p.  340;  'Journ.  As. 
Soc  Bengal,'  vol.  xxiv.  p.  207.  See  Marsdcn  in  'As.  Res.'  rol.  iv.  p.  226; 
Fitch  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  ix.  p.  416  ;  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asioa '  vol.  i.  p,  465  ; 
vol.  il  p  201. 


} 


MYTHOLOGY. 


381 


the  human ;  he  has  no  tail,  and  walks  erect.     The  skin  oi 
his  body  is  black,  and  slightly  covered  with  hair."     That 
this  description  really  applies  not  to  apes,  but  to  the  dark- 
skinned,  non-Aryan  aborigines  of  the  land,  appears  further 
in  the  enumeration  of  the  local  dialects  of  Hindustan,  to 
which,  it  is  said,  "  may  be  added  the  jargon  of  the  bunma- 
nus,  or  wild  men  of  the  woods."  ^     In  the  islands  of  the 
rndian  Archipelago,  whose  tropical  forests  swarm  both  witli 
high  apes  and  low  savages,  the  confusion  between  tlie  two 
in  the  minds  of  the  half-civilized  inhabitants  becomes  almost 
inextricable.     There  is  a  well-known  Hindu  fable  in  tlie 
Hitopadesa,  which  relates  as  a  warning  to  stupid  imitators 
the  fate  of  the  ape  who  imitated  the  carpenter,  and  was 
caught  in  the  cleft  whgn  he  pulled  out  the  wedge  ;  this  fable 
has  come  to  be  told  in  Sumatra  as  a  real  story  of  one  of  the 
indigenous  savages  of  the  island. ^     It  is  to  rude  forest-men 
that  the  Malays  habitually  give  the  name  oi  or<nuj-ntan,  i.e., 
"  man  of  the  woods."     But  in  Borneo  this  term  is  applied 
to  the  miyas  ape,  whence  we  have  learnt  to  call  this  creature 
the  orang-utan,  and  the  Malays  themselves  are  known   to 
give  the  name  in  one  and  the  same  district  to  both  the  sava'^e 
and  the  ape.^     This  term  "  man  of  the  woods  "  extends  f  ir 
beyond  Hindu  and  Malay  limits.     The  Siamese  talk  of  the 
Khon  pa,  "  men  of  the  wood,"  meaning  apes  ;  *  the  Brazil- 
ians of  Cxuiari,  or  **  wood-men,"  meaning  a  certain  sava^re 
tribe/     The  name  of  the  Bosjesman,  so  amusingly  mispro- 
nounced by  Englishmen,  as  though  it  were  some  outlandish 
native  word,  is  merely  the  Dutch  equivalent  for  Bush-man, 
"  man  of  the  woods  or  bush."  "     In  our  own  language  the 

'  Ayeeii  Akbnree,  trans,  by  Gladwin  ;  '  Report  of  Etlinolngioal  Cominittoa 
Jubbulpore  Exliibition,  1866-7,"  part  i.  p.  3.  See  tlie  inentiun  of  tiie  ban- 
manush  m  Kimiaon  and  Nepal,  Campbell;  'Ethnology  of  India,' in  'Journ. 
Ab.  Soc   Bengal,'  1866,  part  ii.  p.  46. 

'  Marsden,  'Sumatra,' p.  41. 

»  Logan  in  'Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  i.  p.  246  ;  vol.  ill.  p.  490;  Thomson, 
iMd.  vol.  1.  p.  850 ;  Crawfurd,  ibid.  vol.  iv.  p.  186. 

•  Bastian,  '  Oe.stl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  p.  123  ;  vol.  iii.  p.  435. 

•  Martius,  '  Ethnog.  Amer.'  vol.  i.  pp.  426,  471. 

•  Its  analogue  is  bosjesbok,  "  bush-goat,"  the  African  antelope.     The  derf. 


m 


;::[l 


ii  I 


i 


I 


382 


MYTHOLOGY. 


**  homo  silvaticiis "  or  "  forest-man "  has  become  the 
**  salvage  man  "  or  savage.  European  opinion  of  the  native 
tribes  of  the  New  World  may  be  judged  of  by  the  fact  that, 
in  1537,  Pope  Paul  III.  had  to  make  express  statement  that 
these  Indians  were  really  men  (attendentes  Indos  ipsos 
utpote  veros  homines).^  Thus  there  is  little  cause  to 
wonder  at  the  circulation  of  stories  of  ape-men  in  South 
America,  and  at  there  being  some  indefiniteness  in  the  local 
accounts  of  the  selvage  or  **  savage,"  that  hairy  wild  man 
of  the  woods  who,  it  is  said,  lives  in  the  trees,  and  some- 
times carries  off  the  native  women.**  The  most  perfect  of 
these  mystifications  is  to  be  found  in  a  Portuguese  manu- 
script quoted  in  the  account  of  Castelnau's  expedition,  and 
giving,  in  all  seriousness,  the  following  account  of  the 
people  called  Cuatas  :  "  This  populous  nation  dwells  east 
of  the  Juruena,  in  the  neighbourhood  of  the  rivers  San  Joao 
and  San  Thome,  advancing  even  to  the  confluence  of  the 
Juruena  and  the  Arinos.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  fact  that 
the  Indians  composing  it  walk  naturally  like  the  quadru- 
peds, with  their  hands  on  the  ground  ;  they  have  the  belly, 
breast,  arms,  and  legs  covered  with  hair,  and  are  of  small 
stature ;  they  are  fierce,  and  use  their  teeth  as  weapons ; 
they  sleep  on  the  ground,  or  among  the  bi'anches  of  trees ; 
they  have  no  industry,  nor  agrioulture,  and  live  only  on 
fruits,  wild  roots,  and  fish."  ^  The  writer  of  this  record 
shows  no  s3'mptom  of  being  aware  that  cuata  or  coata  is  the 
name  of  the  large  black  Simia  Paniscus,  and  that  he  has 
been  really  describing,  not  a  tribe  of  Indians,  but  a  species 
of  apes. 

Various  reasons  may  have  led  to  the  growth  of  another 
quaint  group  of  legends,  describing  human  tribes  with  tails 

vation  of  the  Bosjesman's  name  from  his  nest-like  shelter  in  a  bush,  given  by 
Kolben  and  others  since,  is  newer  and  far-fetchod. 

'  Martins,  vol.  i.  50. 

2  Humboldt  and  Bonpland,  vol  v.  p.  81  ;  Southey,  '  Brazil,'  vol.  i.  p.  xxx. ; 
Bates,  '  Amazons,'  vol.  i.  p.  73  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  204. 

"  Casteluau,  '  Exp.  dans  I'Amdr.  du  Sud,'  vol.  iiL  p.  118.  See  Martina^ 
Tol.i.  pp.  248,  414,  5C3,  633. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


383 


like  beasts.  To  people  who  at  once  believe  moiiktys  a  kind 
of  savages,  and  savages  a  kind  of  monkeys,  men  with  tails 
are  creatures  coming  under  both  definitions.  Thus  the 
Homo  caudatus,  or  satyr,  often  appears  in  popular  belief  as 
a  half-human  creature,  while  even  in  old-fashioned  works 
on  natural  history  he  may  be  found  depicted  on  the  evident 
model  of  an  anthropoid  ape.  In  East  Africa,  the  imagined 
tribe  of  long-tailed  men  are  also  monkey-fliced,^  while  in 
South  America  the  coata  tiqmija,  or  "  monkey-men,"  are  as 
naturally  described  as  men  withtails.^  European  travellers 
have  tried  to  rationalize  the  stories  of  tailed  men  which 
they  meet  with  in  Africa  and  the  East.  Thus  Dr.  Krapf 
points  to  a  leather  appendage  worn  behind  from  the  girdle 
by  the  Wakamba,  and  remarks,  "It  is  no  wonder  that 
people  say  there  are  men  with  tails  in  the  interior  of 
Africa,"  and  other  writers  have  called  attention  to  hanging 
mats  or  waist-cloths,  fly-flappers  or  artificial  tails  worn  fen* 
ornament,  as  having  made  their  wearers  liable  to  be  mis- 
taken at  a  distance  for  tailed  men.'  But  these  apparently 
silly  myths  have  often  a  real  ethnological  significance, 
deeper  at  any  rate  than  such  a  trivial  blunder.  When  an 
ethnologist  meets  in  any  district  with  the  story  of  tailed 
men,  he  ought  to  look  for  a  despised  tribe  of  aborigines,  out- 
casts, or  heretics,  living  near  or  among  a  dominant  popula- 
tion, who  look  upon  them  as  beasts,  and  furnish  them  with 
tails  accordingly.  Although  the  aboriginal  Miau-tsze,  or 
"  children  of  the  soil,"  come  down  from  time  to  time  into 
Canton  to  trade,  the  Chinese  still  firmly  believe  them  to 
have  short  tails  like  monkeys  ;  *  the  half-civilized  Malays 
describe  the  ruder  forest  tribes  as  tailed  men ;  ^  the 
Moslem  nations  of  Africa  tell  the  same  story  of  the  Niam- 

'  Petherick,  'Egypt,  etc.'  p.  367. 

2  Southey,  '  Brazil,'  vol  i.  p.  685  ;  Martius,  vol.  i.  pp.  i25,  633. 

«  Krapf,  p.  142  ;  Baker,  'Albert  Nyanza,'  vol.  i.  p.  83  ;  St.  John,  voL  L 
pp.  51,  405  ;  and  otiiers. 

*  Lockhart,  'Abor.  of  China,'  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  i.  p.  181. 

»  'Journ.  Ind.  Arcbip.'  vol.  ii.  p.  358  ;  vol.  iv.  p.  374  ;  Cameron,  'Malayan 
India,'  p.  120  ;  Marsdeu,  p.  7  ;  Antonio  Galvano,  pp.  120,  218. 


1  it 
111 


1,1 1 


384 


MYXnOLOOT. 


<■■    -H* 


Nam  of  the  interior.*  The  outcast  race  of  Cagots,  about 
the  Pyrenees,  were  said  to  be  born  with  tails;  and  in  Spuiii 
the  mediaeval  superstition  still  survives  that  the  Jews  have 
tails,  like  the  devil,  as  they  say.''  In  England  the  notion 
was  turned  to  theological  profit  by  being  claimed  as  a  judg- 
ment on  wretches  who  insulted  St.  Augustine  and  St. 
Thomas  of  Canterbury.  Home  Tooke  quotes  thus  from 
that  zealous  and  somewhat  foul-mouthed  reformer,  Bishop 
Bale:  "Johan  Capgiave  and  Alexander  of  Esseby  sayth, 
that  for  castynge  of  fyshe  tayles  at  thys  Augustyne,  Dorsett 
Sliyre  menne  hadde  tayles  ever  after.  But  Polydorus 
applieth  it  unto  Kentish  men  at  Stroud  by  Rochester,  for 
cuttinge  of  Thomas  Becket's  horse's  tail.  Thus  hath  Eng- 
land in  all  other  land  a  perpetuall  infiimy  of  tayles  by  theyr 
wrytten  legendes  of  lyes,  yet  can  they  not  well  tell,  where  to 

bestowe   them   trn.ely an    Englyshman 

now  cannot  travayle  in  an  other  land,  by  wa}'^  of  marchan- 
dyse  or  anj'  other  honest  occupj'inge,  but  it  is  most  con- 
tuineliousl}^  thrown  in  his  tethe,  that  al  Englishmen  have 
tailes."^  The  story  at  last  sank  into  a  commonplace  of 
local  slander  between  shire  and  shire,  and  the  Devonshire 
belief  that  Cornishmen  had  tails  lint^ered  at  least  till  a  few 
years  ago.*  Not  less  curious  is  the  tradition  among  savage 
tribes,  that  the  tailed  state  was  an  early  or  original  condi- 
tion of  man.  In  the  Fiji  Islands  there  is  a  legend  of  a  tribe 
of  men  with  tails  like  dogs,  who  perished  in  the  great 
deluge,  while  the  Tasmanians  declared  that  men  originally 
had  tails  and  no  knee-joints.  Among  the  natives  of  Brazil, 
it  is  related  by  a  Portuguese  writer  of  about  1600,  after  a 
couple  have  been  married,  the  father  or  father-in-law  cuts  a 
wooden  stick  with  a  sharp  flint,  imagining  that  by  this  cere- 
mony he  cuts  off  the  tails  of  any  future  grandchildren,  so 

'  Davis,  'Carthage,'  p.  230 ;  Bostock  and  Riley's  Pliny  (Bohii's  ed.),  vol.  ii 
p.  134,  note. 

2  Fiancisqiie-Michel,  'Races  Maudites,'  vol.  i.  p.  17;  'Argot,'  p.  849; 
Fernaii  C'abuUero,  *  La  Gaviota,'  vol.  i.  p.  59. 

•  Home  Touke,  '  Diveibions  of  Purley,'  vol.  L  p.  397. 

*  Baring-Gould,  'Myths,'  p.  137. 


a 


.),  vol.  ii. 
p.  349; 


MYTHOLOGY. 


385 


that  they  will  be  born  tailless.^  There  seems  no  emleiue 
to  connect  the  occasional  occurrence  of  tail-like  projections 
by  malfoiTnation  with  the  stories  of  tailed  human  tribes.' 

Anthropology,  until  modern  times,  classified  among  its 
facts  the  particulars  of  monstrous  human  tribes,  gigantic  or 
dwarfish,  mouthless  or  headless,  one-eyed  or  one-legged, 
and  so  forth.  The  works  of  ancient  geographers  and 
naturalists  abound  in  descriptions  of  these  strange  creatures ; 
writers  such  as  Isidore  of  Seville  and  Roger  Bacon  collected 
them,  and  sent  them  into  fresh  and  wider  circulation  in  the 
middle  ages,  and  the  popular  belief  of  uncivilized  nations 
retains  them  still.  It  was  not  till  the  real  world  had  been 
so  thoroughly  explored  as  to  leave  little  room  in  it  for  the 
monsters,  that  about  the  beginning  of  the  present  century 
science  banished  them  to  the  ideal  world  of  mythology. 
Having  had  to  glance  here  at  two  of  the  principal  species 
in  this  amazing  semi-human  menagtnie,  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  look  among  the  rest  for  more  hints  as  to  the 
sources  of  mythic  fancy.^ 

That  some  of  the  myths  of  giants  and  dwarfs  are  con- 
nected with  traditions  of  real  indigenous  or  hostile  ti'ibes  is 
settled  beyond  question  by  the  evidence  brought  forward  by 
Grimm,  Nilsson,  and  Hanusch.  With  all  the  difficulty  of 
analyzing  the  mixed  nature  of  the  dwarfs  of  European  folk- 
lore, and  judging  how  far  they  are  elves,  or  gnomes,  or  such 
like  nature-spirits,  and  how  far  human  beings  in  mythic 
aspect,  it  is  impossible  not  to  recognize  this  latter  element 

'  Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  i.  p.  252;  Backhouse,  'Austr.'  p.  657;  Purchas, 
vol.  iv.  p.  1290  ;  De  Laet,  'Novus  Orliis,'  p.  54'3. 

^  For  various  other  stories  of  tailed  men,  see  'As.  Res.'  vol.  iii.  p.  149  ; 
'  Mem.  Anthrop.  Soc.'  vol.  i.  p.  454  ;  '  Jouru.  Ind.  Arcliip.'  vol.  iii.  p.  v:61,  etc. 
(Nici;bar  Islands);  Klumm,  '  C.  G.'  vol.  ii.  pp.  246,  316  (Sarytschew  Is.); 
'Letters  o{' Columbus,'  Hakluyt  Soc.  p.  11  (Cuba),  etc.,  etc. 

*  Details  of  monstrous  tribes  have  been  in  past  centuries  specially  collected 
in  the  following  works  :  '  Anthropometamorphosis  :  Man  Transformed,  or  the 
Artiticiall  Changeling,  etc.,"  scnpsit  J.  Ii.  cognomento  Chirosophu.->,  M.D  , 
London,  1653  ;  Calovius,  '  De  Tliaumatanthropologia,  vera  pariter  atijue  licta 
tractatus  historico-pliysicu.s,'  Rostock,  1685  ;  J  A.  Fabriciu.s,  'Dissertutio  de 
hominibus  orbis  nostri  iucolis,  etc.,'  Hamburg,  1721.  Duly  a  few  princijial 
reffrences  are  here  given. 

VOL  I.  0  0 


'    .  I 


n  > 


386 


MYTHOLOGY. 


!.'  ,  I 


i  '■': 


in  the  kindly  or  mischievous  aborigines  of  the  land,  with 
their  special  language,  and  religion,  and  costume.  The 
giants  appear  in  European  folklore  as  Stone-Age  heathen, 
sh)'  of  the  conquering  tribes  of  men,  loathing  their  agricul- 
ture and  the  sound  of  their  church-bells.  The  rude  native's 
fear  of  the  more  civilized  intruder  in  his  land  is  well  de- 
picted in  the  tale  of  the  giant's  daughter,  who  found  the 
boor  ploughing  his  field  and  carried  him  home  in  her  apron 
for  a  plaything — plough,  and  oxen,  and  all ;  but  her  mother 
bade  her  carry  them  back  to  where  she  found  them,  for, 
said  she,  they  are  of  a  people  that  can  do  the  Huns  much 
ill.  The  fact  of  the  giant  tribes  bearing  such  historic  names 
as  Hun  or  Chud  is  significant,  and  Slavonic  men  have, 
perhaps,  not  yet  forgotten  that  the  dwarfs  talked  of  in  their 
legends  were  descended  from  the  aborigines  whom  the  Old- 
Prussians  found  in  the  land.  Beyond  a  doubt  the  old 
Scandinavians  are  describing  the  ancient  and  ill-used  Lapp 
population,  once  so  widely  spread  over  Northern  Europe, 
when  their  sagas  tell  of  the  dwarfs,  stunted  and  ugly,  dressed 
in  reindeer  kirtle  and  coloured  cap,  cunning  and  cowardly, 
sh}'  of  intercourse  even  with  friendly  Norsemen,  dwelling  in 
caves  or  in  the  mound-like  Lapland  "  gamm,"  armed  only 
with  arrows  tipped  with  stone  and  bone,  yet  feared  and 
hated  by  their  conquerors  for  their  fancied  powers  of  witch- 
craft.^ Moslem  legend  relates  that  the  race  of  ,Gog  and 
Magog  (Yajuj  and  Majuj)  are  of  tiny  stature,  but  with  ears 
like  elephants ;  they  are  a  numerous  people,  and  ravaged 
the  world ;  they  dwell  in  the  East,  separated  from  Persia 
by  a  high  mountain,  with  bat  one  pass ;  and  the  nations 
tlieir  neighbours,  when  they  heard  of  Alexander  the  Great 
(Dim  1 '  Karnein)  traversing  the  world,  paid  tribute  to  him, 
and  he  made  them  a  wall  of  bronze  and  iron,  to  keep  in  the 
nation  of  Gog  and  Magog.^    Who  can  fail  to  recognize  in 

'  Grimm,  'D.  M.'  ch,  xvii.  xviii. ;  Nilsson,  '  Primitive  luhabitants  of  Scan- 
dinavia,"  ch.  vi.  ;  Hauusch,  'Slav.  Myth.'  pp.  230,  325-7  ;  Wuttke,  '  Volksa- 
bergl.'  p.  231. 

»  •  Chronique  do  Tabari,'  tr.  Dubeux,  part  L  ch.  viiL     See  Koran,  xviii.  94 


MYTHOLOGY. 


387 


this  a  mystified  description  of  the  Tatars  of  High  Asia? 
Professor  Nilsson  tries  to  account  in  a  general  way  for  the 
huge  or  tiny  stature  of  legencUiry  tribes,  as  being  mere 
exaggeration  of  their  actual  largeness  or  smallncss.  We 
must  admit  that  this  sometimes  really  happens.  The 
accounts  which  European  eye-witnesses  brouglit  home  of 
the  colossal  stature  of  the  Patagonians,  to  whose  waists 
they  declared  their  own  heads  reached,  are  enough  to  settle 
once  for  all  the  fact  that  myths  of  giants  may  arise  from  the 
sight  of  really  tall  men ;  ^  and  it  is  so,  too,  with  the  dwarf- 
legends  of  the  same  region,  as  where  Knivet,  the  old  traveller, 
remarks  of  the  little  people  of  Rio  de  la  Plata,  that  they  are 
"  not  so  very  little  as  described."  ^ 

Nevertheless,  this  same  group  of  giant  and  dwarf  myths 
may  serve  as  a  warning  not  to  stretch  too  widely  a  partial 
explanation,  however  sound  within  its  proper  limits.  There 
is  plenty  of  evidence  that  giant-legends  are  sometimes  philo- 
sophic myths,  made  to  account  for  the  finding  of  great  fossil 
bones.  To  give  but  a  single  instance  of  such  connexion, 
certain  huge  jaws  and  teeth,  found  in  excavating  on  the 
Hoe  at  Plymouth,  were  recognized  as  belonging  to  the  giant 
Gogmagog,  who  in  old  times  fought  his  last  fight  there 
against  Corineus,  the  eponymic  hero  of  Cornwall.^  As  to 
the  dwarfs,  again,  stories  of  them  are  curiously  associated 
with  those  long-enduring  monuments  of  departed  races — 
their  burial-cysts  and  dolmens.  Thus,  in  the  United  States, 
ranges  of  rude  stone  cysts,  often  only  two  or  three  feet  long, 
are  connected  with  the  idea  of  a  pygmy  race  buried  in  them, 
while  in  India  it  is  a  usual  legend  of  the  prehistoric  dolmens, 
that  they  were  dwarfs'  houses — the  dwellings  of  the  ancient 


•  Pigafetta  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  xi.  p.  314.  See  Blumenbach,  '  De  Geueria 
Humana;  Varietate  ;'  Fitzroy,  '  Voy.  of  Adventure  and  Ikagle,'  vol.  i. ;  Waitz, 
•  Anthropologie,'  vol.  iii.  p.  488. 

•  Knivet  in  Purehas,  vol.  iv.  p.  1231  ;  compare  Humboldt  and  Bonpland, 
vol.  V.  p.  564,  with  ilartiua,  '  Ethnog.  Amer.'  p.  424  ;  see  also  Krapf,  'East 
Africa,'  p.  61;  Du  Chuillu,  '  Ashango-Iand,'  p.  319. 

•  'Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,'  ch.  xL  ;  Hunt,  '  Pop.  Rom.'  Ist  series,  pp.  18, 
804. 

0  0  2 


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MYTHOLOGY. 


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pygmies,  wlio  here  again  np])par  as  representatives  of  pre- 
historic tribes.^  But  a  very  diflFerent  meaning  is  obvious  in 
a  mediteval  traveller's  account  of  the  hairy,  nuui-like 
creatures  of  Cathay,  one  cubit  high,  and  that  do  not  bend 
their  knees  as  they  walk,  or  in  an  Arab  geographer's  de- 
scription of  an  island  people  in  the  Indian  seas,  four  spans 
lii;^'h,  naked,  with  red  downy  hair  on  their  faces,  and  who 
climb  np  trees  and  shun  mankind.  If  any  one  could  pos- 
sibly doubt  the  real  nature  of  these  dwarfs,  his  doubt  may 
be  re.-!olved  by  Marco  Polo's  statement  that  in  his  time 
monkeys  were  regularl}'  embalmed  in  the  East  Indies,  and 
sold  in  boxes  to  be  exhibited  over  the  world  as  pigmies.^ 
Thus  various  different  facts  have  given  rise  to  stories  of 
giants  and  dwarfs,  more  than  one  mythic  element  perhaps 
combining  to  form  a  single  legend — a  result  perplexing  in 
the  extreme  to  the  mythological  interpreter. 

Descriptions  of  strange  tribes  made  in  entire  good  faith 
may  come  to  be  understood  in  new  extravagent  senses,  when 
carried  among  people  not  aware  of  the  original  facts.  The 
following  are  some  interpretations  of  this  kind,  among 
which  some  far-fetched  cases  are  given,  to  show  that  the 
method  must  not  be  trusted  too  much.  The  term  "  nose- 
less "  is  apt  to  be  misunderstood,  yet  it  was  fairly  enough 
applied  to  flat-nosed  trib(  s,  such  as  Turks  of  the  steppes, 
whom  Rabbi  Benjamin  of  Tudela  thus  depicts  in  the  twelfth 
century  : — "  They  have  no  noses,  but  draw  breath  through 
two  small  holes."  ^  Again,  among  the  common  ornamental 
mutilations  of  savages  is  that  of  stretching  the  ears  to  an 
enormous  size  by  weights  or  coils,  and  it  is  thus  verbally 
quite  true  that  there  are  men  whose  ears  hang  down  upon 
their  shoulders.     Yet  without  explanation  sucK  a  phrase 

'  Squier,  *  Abor.  Monuments  of  N.  Y.'  p.  68  ;  Long's  '  Exp.'  vol.  i.  pp.  62, 
275  ;  Meadows  Taylor  in  '  Journ.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  i.  p.  157. 

2  Gul.  de  Hubruquis  in  I'lnkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  69  ;  Lane,  '  Thousand  and 
One  N.'  vol.  iii.  pp.  81,  91,  see  24,  52,  97  ;  Hole,  p.  63  ;  Murco  Polo,  book  iii. 
ch.  xii. 

8  Henjamin  of  Tudelii,  '  Itinerary,'  ed.  and  tr.  by  Asher,  83  ;  Plia.  viL  SL 
See  Max  Miiller  in  Bunsen,  vol.  i.  pp.  346,  358u 


MYTHOLOGY. 


389 


would  be  understood  to  describe,  not  the  appearance  of  a 
real  savage  with  liis  ear-lobes  stiotehed  into  pendant  fleshy 
loops,  but  nitliif  that  of  Piny's  Panotii,  or  of  the  Indian 
Karnaprdi  irana,  "  whose  ears  serve  thein  for  cloaks,"  or  of 
the  African  (Ivvjirfs,  said  to  use  their  ears  one  for  mattress 
and  the  other  for  coverlet  when  they  lie  down.  One  of  the 
most  extravagant  of  these  stories  is  told  by  Fray  Pedro 
Simon  in  California,  where  in  futit  the  territory  of  Ore<ion 
has  its  name  from  the  Spanish  term  of  Orcjonea,  or  "Big- 
Ears,"  given  to  the  inhabitants  from  their  practice  of 
stretching  their  ears  with  ornaments.^  Even  purely  meta- 
phorical descriptions,  if  taken  in  a  literal  sense,  are  capable 
of  turning  into  catches,  like  the  story  of  the  horse  with  its 
head  where  its  tail  should  be.  I  have  been  told  by  a 
French  Protestant  from  the  Nismes  distiict  that  the  epithet 
of  gorgeo  negro,  or  "  black-throat,"  by  which  Catholics 
describe  a  '  Huguenot,  is  taken  so  literally  that  lieretic 
children  are  sometimes  forced  to  open  their  mouths  to 
satisfy  the  orthodox  of  their  being  of  the  usual  colour 
within.  On  examining  the  descriptions  of  savage  tribes  by 
higher  races,  it  appears  that  several  of  the  epithets  usually 
ipplied  only  need  literalizing  to  turn  into  the  wildest  of  the 
legendary  monster-stories.  Thus  the  Birmese  speak  of  the 
rude  Karens  as  "dog-men;"^  Marco  Polo  describes  the 
Angaman  (Andaman)  islanders  as  brutish  and  savage  can- 
nibals, with  heads  like  dogs.^  jElian's  account  of  the  dog- 
headed  people  of  India  is  on  the  face  of  it  an  account  of  a 
savage  race.  The  Kynokephali,  he  says,  are  so  called  from 
their  bodily  appearance,  but  otherwise  they  are  human,  and 

1  Plin.  iv.  27 ;  Mela,  iii.  6  ;  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  p.  120  ;  vol.  il 
p.  93  ;  St.  John,  vol.  ii.  p.  117  ;  Marsden,  p.  53  ;  Lane,  ♦  Thousand  and  One 
N.'  voL  iii.  pp.  92,  305;  Petherick,  '  E;,'yiit,  etc.'  p.  3G7  ;  Burton,  -Centml 
Afr.'  vol.  L  p.  235 ;  Pedro  Simon,  '  Indiiis  Occideutales,'  p.  7.  A  naina 
similar  to  Oregones  is  Patrn/ones,  or  '  Bij^-feet,'  wliich  remains  in  Patagonia  : 
compare  with  this  the  stories  of  men  with  feet  so  large  as  to  .serve  for  pura-sola, 
the  Skiapodes  or  '  Shadowfeet, '  Plin.  vii  2;  see  Bawlinson's  Herodotoa, 
Tol.  i.  p.  50. 

^  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  p.  188. 

'  Marco  Polo,  book  ilL  ch.  xviiL 


i  t- 


I 


■    i 


!i 


390 


MYTHOLOGY. 


tliey  go  dressed  in  the  skins  of  beasts ;  they  are  just,  and 
harm  not  men ;  they  cannot  speak,  but  roar,  yet  they 
understand  the  language  of  the  Indians;  they  live  by 
hunting,  being  swift  of  foot,  and  they  cook  their  game  not 
by  lire,  but  by  tearing  it  into  fragments  and  drying  it  in  the 
Bun  ;  they  keep  goats  and  sheep,  and  drink  the  milk.  The 
naturalist  concludes  by  saying  that  he  mentions  these  fitly 
among  the  irrational  animals,  because  thej'  have  not  articu- 
late, distinct,  and  human  language.^  This  last  suggestive 
remark  well  stales  the  old  prevalent  notion  that  barbarians 
have  no  real  language,  but  are  "  speechless,"  "  tongueless," 
or  even  mouthless.^  Another  monstrous  people  of  wide 
celebrity  are  Pliny's  Blemmyie,  said  to  be  headless,  and 
accordingly  to  have  their  mouths  and  eyes  in  their  breasts ; 
creatures  over  whom  Prester  John  reigned  in  Asia,  who 
dwelt  far  and  wide  in  South  American  forests,  and  who  to 
our  mediaeval  ancestors  were  as  real  as  the  cannibals  with 
whom  Othello  couples  them. 

"  The  Anthropophagi,  and  men  whose  heads 
Do  grow  beneath  their  shoulders." 


If,  however,  we  look  in  dictionaries  for  the  Acephali,  we 
may  find  not  actual  headless  monsters,  but  heretics  so  called 
because  their  original  head  or  founder  was  not  known ;  and 
when  the  kingless  Turkoman  hordes  say  of  themselves  "We 
are  a  people  without  a  head,"  the  metaphor  is  even  more 
plain  and  natural.^     Again,  Moslem  legend  tells  of  the 

'  iElian,  iv.  46  ;  Plin.  vi.  35 ;  vii.  2.  See  for  other  versions,  Purchaa, 
vol.  iv.  p.  1191  ;  vol.  v.  p.  901  ;  Cranz,  p.  '267  ;  Lane,  'Thousand  and  One 
Niglits,'  vol.  iii.  pp.  S6,  94,  97,  305  ;  Davis,  'Carthage,'  p.  '230  ;  Latham, 
•Duscr.  Eih.'vol.  ii.  p.  83. 

*  riin.  v.  8;  vi.  24,  35;  vii.  2;  Mela,  iii.  9;  Herliurstein  in  Haklujt, 
▼ol.  i.  p.  593  ;  Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth.'  vol.  i.  p.  483  ;  Davis,  1.  c.  ;  see  '  Early 
Hist,  of  Manknid,'  p.  77. 

**  i'lin.  v.  8  ;  Lane,  vol.  i.  p.  33  ;  vol.  iL  p.  377  ;  vol.  iii.  p.  81 ;  Eiseu- 
mengcr,  vol.  ii.  p.  r)jd  ;  Mandeville,  p.  243  ;  Kaleigh  in  Hakluyt,  vol.  iiL 
pp.  ti52,  665;  Humboldt  ami  Boiipland,  vol.  v.  p.  176;  Purclias,  vol.  iv. 
p.  12^^5  ;  vol.  V.  p.  901  ;  Isidor.  llispal.  &  v.  'Acephali ;'  Vauibery,  p.  310, 
uec  p.  436. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


391 


Shikk  and  the  Nesnas,  creatures  like  one  half  of  a  split 
man,  with  one  arm,  leg,  and  eye.  Possibly  it  was  thence 
that  the  Zulus  got  their  idea  of  a  tribe  of  half-men,  who  in 
one  of  their  stories  found  a  Zulu  maiden  in  a  cave  and 
thought  she  was  two  people,  but  on  closer  inspection  of  her 
admitted,  "The  thing  is  pretty!  But  oh  the  two  legs!" 
This  odd  fancy  coincides  with  the  simple  metaphor  which 
describes  a  savnge  as  only  "  half  a  man,"  scmihonio,  as 
Virgil  calls  the  ferocious  Cacus.^  Again,  when  the  Chinese 
compared  themselves  to  the  outer  barbarians,  they  said 
"  We  see  with  two  eyes,  the  Latins  with  one,  and  all  other 
nations  are  blind."  Such  metaphors,  proverbial  among 
ourselves,  verbally  correspond  with  legends  of  one-eyed 
tribes,  such  as  th-:  savage  cave-dwelling  Kyklopes.^  Verbal 
coincidence  of  this  kind,  untrustworthy  enough  in  these 
latter  instances,  passes  at  last  into  the  vaguest  t'nncy.  The 
negroes  called  Europeans  **  long-headed,"  using  the  phrase 
in  our  familiar  metaphorical  sense ;  but  translate  it  into 
Greek,  and  at  once  Hesiod's  Makrokephnlol  come  into 
heing.^  And,  to  conclude  the  list,  one  of  the  commonest 
of  the  monster-tribes  of  the  Old  and  New  World  is  that 
distinguished  by  having  feet  turned  backward.  Now  there 
is  really  a  people  whose  name,  memorable  in  scientific 
controversy,  describes  them  as  **  having  feet  the  opposite 


Eisou- 
vol.  iiu 
vol.  It. 
p.  810, 


'  Lane,  vol.  i.  p.  33;  Callaway,  'Zulu  Tale.s.'vol.  i.  pp.  199,  202.  Virg. 
^n.  viii.  194  ;  a  similar  mctaplior  is  the  name  of  the  Nim  chas,  from  Persian 
uim — half,  'Jouni.  Ktli.  See' vol.  i  p.  l!*2,  ef.  b'vench  de mi-mo nda.  Compare 
the  'one-legged'  tribes,  Plin.  vii.  2  ;  Schooluralt,  'Indian  Tribus,' part  iii. 
p.  ;i2l  ;  Charlevoix,  vol.  i.  p.  25.  The  Anstraliaus  use  the  metapiior  'of  one 
leg'  (matta  gyn^  to  describe  tribes  as  of  one  stock,  G.  F.  Moore,  '  Vocab.' 
pii.  5,  71. 

^  Hayton  in  Purchas,  vol.  iii.  p.  108  ;  see  Klemra,  'C.  G.'  vol.  vi.  p.  129 ; 
Vambdry,  p.  49  ;  Homer.  Od^ss.  ix.  ;  Strabo,  i.  '2,  Vi  ;  sec  Scherzer,  '  Voy.  of 
JMo vara,' vol.  ii.  p.  40;  C.  J.  Andersson,  'Lake  Ngami,  etc.,'  p.  453;  Du 
Chaillu,  •  Equatorial  Africa,'  p.  440  ;  Sir  J.  Richardson,  '  Polar  Regions,'  p.  300. 
For  tribes  wilii  more  than  two  eyes,  see  Pliny's  metaphorically  explained 
Nisacaithaj  and  Nisyti,  Plin.  vi.  35  ;  also  IJastian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  414; 
'  Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  pp.  25,  76  ;  Petherick,  1.  c. ;  Bowen,  '  Yoruba  Gr. '  p.  xx. ;, 
Schirren,  p.  196. 

=•  Koelle,  '  Vei  Gr.*  p.  229  ;  Strabo,  i.  2,  35. 


I! 


in 


I  i! 


392 


MYTHOLOGY. 


li:  .■:#i 


way,"   and  they  still  retain   that  ancient  name  of  Anti- 
podes.^ 

Returning  from  this  digression  to  the  region  of  philo- 
sophic myth,  we  may  examine  new  groups  of  explanatory 
stories,  produced  from  that  craving  to  know  causes  and 
reasons  which  ever  besets  mankind.  When  the  attention 
of  a  man  in  the  myth-making  stage  of  intellect  is  drawn  to 
any  phenomenon  or  custom  which  has  to  him  no  obvious 
reason,  he  invents  and  tells  a  story  to  account  for  it,  and 
even  if  he  does  not  persuade  himself  that  this  is  a  real 
legend  of  his  forefathers,  the  story-teller  who  hears  it  from 
him  and  repeats  it  is  troubled  with  no  such  difficulty.  Our 
task  in  dealing  with  such  stories  is  made  easy  when  the 
criterion  of  possibility  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  them. 
It  has  become  a  mere  certainty  to  moderns  that  asbestos  is 
not  really  salamander's  wool;  that  morbid  hunger  is  not 
really  caused  by  a  lizard  or  a  bird  in  a  man's  stomach  ;  that 
a  (Chinese  philosopher  cannot  really  have  invented  the  fire- 
drill  by  seeing  a  bird  peck  at  the  branches  of  a  tree  till 
sparks  came.  The  African  Wakuafi  account  for  their  cattle- 
lifting  proclivities  by  the  calm  assertion  that  Engai,  that  is, 
Heaven,  gave  all  cattle  to  them,  and  so  wherever  there  is 
any  it  is  their  call  to  go  and  seize  it.''  So  in  South  America 
the  fierce  IMbayas  declare  they  received  from  the  Caracara 
a  divine  command  to  make  war  on  all  other  tribes,  killing 
the  men  and  adopting  the  women  and  children.^  But 
though  it  may  be  consistent  with  the  notions  of  these 
savages  to  relate  such  explanatory  legends,  it  is  not  con- 
sistent with  our  notions  to  believe  them.  Fortunately,  too, 
the  ex  post  facto  legends  are  apt  to  come  into  collision  with 
more  authentic  sources  of  information,  or  to"  encroach  on 
the  domain  of  valid  history.  It  is  of  no  use  for  the 
Chinese  to  tell  their  stupid  story  of  written  characters 
having  been  invented  from  the   markings  on  a  tortoise's 

•  Plin.  vii.  2  ;  Humboldt  and  Bonpland,  voL  v.  p.  81. 
«  Knii.f,  p.  359. 

•  Southey,  '  BrazU,'  vol.  iii.  p.  890. 


I    J 


MYTHOLOGY. 


393 


Anti- 

philo- 

latory 

s  and 

Bntion 

iwn  to 

bvious 

it,  and 

a  real 

it  from 

.     Our 

ten  the 

I  them. 

estos  is 

•  is  not 

h;  that 

the  fire- 

itree  till 

lY  cattle- 

,  that  is, 
there  is 
America 

Caracara 

s,  killing 
But 
of  these 
not  con- 
tely,  too, 
sion  with 
•roach  on 
for  the 
jharacters 
tortoise's 


shell,  for  the  early  forms  of   such  charact(!rs,  plain  and 
simple  pictures  of  objects,  have  been  preserved  in  China  to 
this  day.     Nor  can  we  praise  anything  but  ingenuity  in  the 
West  Highland  legend  that  the  Pope  once  laid  an  interdict 
on  the  land,  but  forgot  to  curse  the  hills,  so  the  people 
tilled  them,  this  story  being  told  to  account  for  those  an- 
cient traces  of  tillage  still  to  be  seen  on  the  wild  hill-sides, 
the    so-called    "  elf-furrows."^      The    most    embarrassing 
cases  of  explanatory  tradil'.on  are  those  which  are  neither 
impossible  enough  to  condemn,   nor   probable    enough  to 
receive.     Ethnographers  who  know  how  world-wide  is  the 
practice  of  defacing  the  teeth  among  the  lower  races,  and 
how  it  only  dies  gradually  out  in  higher  civilization,  natu- 
rally ascribe  the  habit  to  some  general  reason  in  human 
nature,  at  a  particular  stage  of  development.     But  the  mu- 
tilating tribes  themselves  have  local  legends  to  account  for 
local  customs ;    thus  the  Penongs  of  Birmah  and  the  Ba- 
toka  of  East  Africa  both  break  their  front  teeth,  but  the 
one  tribe  says  its  reason  is  not  to  look  like  ai)es,  the  other 
that  it  is  to  be  like  oxen  and  not  like  zebras.^     Of  the 
legends  of  tattooing,  one   of  the  od(h>st  is   that   told  to 
account  for  the  fact  that  while  the  Fijians  tattoo  only  the 
women,  their  neighbours,  the  Tongans,  tattoo  only  the  men. 
It  is  related  that  a  Tongan,  on  his  way  from  Fiji  to  report 
to  his  countrymen  the  proper  custom  for  them  to  observe, 
went  on  his  way  repeating  the  rule  he  had  carefully  learnt 
by  heart,  "  Tattoo  the  women,  but  not  the  men,"  but  un- 
luckily he  tripped  over  a  stump,  got  his  lesson  wrong,  and 
reached  Tonga  repeating   "  Tattoo  the  men,  but  not  the 
women,"    an   ordinance  which  they   observed   ever    after. 
How  reasonable  such  an  explanation  seemed  to  the  Poly- 
nesian mind,  may  be  judged  from  the  Samoans  having  a 
version  with  different   details,   and   applied   to  their   own 
mstead  of  the  Tongan  islands.^ 

•  D.  Wilson,  *  ArchreoloLjy,  etc.  of  Scotland,'  p.  123. 

*  Bastian,  'Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  i.  p.  128  ;  Livingstone,  p.  632. 

»  Williunis,  'Fiji,'  p.  160;  Seemann,  *Viti,'  p.  113;  Turner,  'Polynea*," 


,  I 


III 


U^ 


(1- 


394 


MYTHOLOGY. 


*   i'l 


;'  ■'  ?f  c 


ji ' 


f    :ll 


All  men  feel  how  wanting  in  sense  of  reality  is  a  story 
with  no  personal  name  to  hang  it  to.  This  want  is  thus 
graphically  expressed  by  Sprenger  the  historian  in  his  life 
of  Mohammed  :  "  It  makes,  on  me  at  least,  quite  a  different 
impression  when  it  is  related  that  *  the  Prophet  said  to 
Alkama,'  even  if  I  knew  nothing  whatever  else  of  this 
Alkama,  than  if  it  were  merel}''  stated  that  *  he  said  to 
somebody.'  "  The  feeling  which  this  acute  and  learned 
critic  thus  candidly  confesses,  has  from  the  earliest  times, 
and  in  the  minds  of  men  troubled  with  no  such  nice  his- 
toric conscience,  germinated  to  the  production  of  much 
mythic  fruit.  Thus  it  has  come  to  pass  that  one  of  the 
leading  personages  to  be  met  with  in  the  tradition  of  the 
world  is  really  no  more  than — Somebody.  There  is  no- 
thing this  wondrous  creature  cannot  achieve,  no  shnpe  he 
cannot  put  on  ;  one  only  restriction  binds  him  at  all,  that 
the  name  he  assumes  shall  have  some  sort  of  congvuity 
with  the  office  he  undertakes,  and  even  fi-om  this  he  often- 
times breaks  loose.  So  rife  in  our  own  day  is  this  manu- 
facture of  personal  history,  often  fitted  up  with  details  of 
place  and  date  into  the  very  semblance  of  real  chronicle, 
that  it  may  be  guessed  how  vast  its  working  must  have  been 
in  days  of  old.  Thus  the  ruins  of  ancient  buildings,  of 
whose  real  history  and  use  no  trustworthy  tradition  survives 
in  local  memory,  have  been  easily  furnished  by  myth  with  a 
builder  and  a  purpose.  In  Mexico  the  great  Somebody 
assumes  the  name  of  Montezuma,  and  builds  the  aqueduct 
of  Tezcuco ;  to  the  Persian  any  huge  and  antique  ruin  is 
the  work  of  the  heroic  Antar ;  in  Russia,  says  Dr.  Bastian, 
buildings  of  the  most  various  ages  are  set  down  to  Peter 
the  Great,  as  in  Spain  to  Boabdil  or  Charles  V.;  and 
European  folklore  may  attribute  to  the  Devil  any  old  build- 
ing of  unusual  massiveness,  and  especially  those  stone 
structures  which  antiquaries  now  class  as  pra3-historic  mo- 
numents.    With  a  more  graceful  thought,  the  Indians  of 

p.  182)  a  siiniliir  legend  told  by  the  Sainoaus).     Another  ta'tooiiig  legend  iu 
Latham,  '  Descr.  Kth.'  vol.  i.  p.  152  ;  Bastian,  *  Oestl.  Aden,'  vol.  i.  p.  112. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


3!)i 


story 
thus 
iS  life 
Teient 
aid  to 
f  this 
aid  to 
earned 
times, 

ce  his- 

much 

of  the 

L  of  the 
is  no- 

inpe  he 

all,  that 

Diigvuity 

le  often- 

s  iiianu- 

letails  of 

hronicle, 

ave  been 

clings,  of 
survives 
,h  with  a 

Somebody 
aqueduct 

le  ruin  is 
Bastian, 

L  to  Peter 

v.;    a"d 

old  build- 

lose   stone 

-storic  mo- 
Indians  of 

,i,i<r  legend  iu 


North  America  declare  that  the  imitative  tumuli  of  Ohio, 
great  mounds  laid  out  in  rude  imitation  of  animals,  were 
shaped  in  old  days  by  the  great  Manitu  himself,  in  promise  of 
a  plentiful  supi)ly  of  game  in  the  world  of  spirits.  The  New 
Zealanders  tell  how  the  hero  Kupe  separated  the  North  and 
South  Islands,  and  formed  Cook's  Straits.  Greek  myth 
placed  at  the  gate  of  the  IMediterranean  the  twin  pillars  of 
Herakles  ;  in  more  recent  times  the  opening  of  the  Straits 
of  Gibraltar  became  one  of  the  many  feats  of  Alexander  of 
Macedon.^  Such  a  group  of  stories  as  this  is  no  unfair  test 
of  the  value  of  mere  traditions  of  personal  names  which 
simply  answer  the  questions  that  mankind  have  been  asking 
for  ages  about  the  origin  of  their  rites,  laws,  customs,  arts. 
Some  such  traditions  are  of  course  genuine,  and  we  may  be 
able,  especially  in  the  more  modern  cases,  to  separate  the 
real  from  the  imaginary.  But  it  must  be  distinctly  laid 
down  that,  in  the  absence  of  corroborative  evidence,  every 
tradition  stands  suspect  of  mythology,  if  it  can  be  made  by 
the  simple  device  of  fitting  some  personal  name  to  the 
purely  theoretical  assertion  that  somebody  must  have  intro- 
duced into  the  world  fire-making,  or  weapons,  or  ornaments, 
or  games,  or  agriculture,  or  marriage,  or  any  other  of  the 
elements  of  civilization. 

Among  the  various  matters  which  have  excited  curiosity, 
and  led  to  its  satisfaction  by  explanatory  myths,  are  local 
names.  These,  when  the  popular  ear  has  lost  their  primi- 
tive significance,  become  in  barbaric  times  an  apt  subject 
for  the  myth-maker  to  explain  in  his  peculiar  fashion. 
Thus  the  Tibetans  declare  that  their  lake  Chomoriri  was 
named  from  a  woman  (chomo)  who  was  carried  into  it  by  the 
yak  she  was  riding,  and  cried  in  terror  ri-ri !  The  Arabs 
say  the  founders  of  the  city  of  Seniuutr  saw  on  the  river 
bank   a   beautiful   woman   with   teeth   glittering  hke   fire, 


•  Bastian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  iii.  pp.  167-8  ;  Wilkinson  in  Rawlinson's  '  Hero- 
dotus,' vol,  ii.  p.  7y  ;  Grimm,  '  D,  M.'  pp.  972-(j  ;  W.  G.  Palgnvve,  'Arabia,' 
vol.  i.  p.  251  ;  Squier  and  Davis,  *  Mouumenta  of  Mississippi  Valley,'  p.  134  ; 
Taylor,  'New  Zealand,'  p.  258. 


h   '! 


396 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I  I 


P.    :    :  a 
V:      3 


I'i  i 


whence  they  called  the  place  Sinndr,  i.  «.,  "  tooth  of  fire." 
The  Arkadians  derived  the  name  of  their  town  Trapezua 
from  the  table  {trapeza),  which  Zeus  overturned  when  the 
wolfish  Lykaon  served  a  child  on  it  for  a  banquet  to  him.^ 
Such  crude  fancies  no  way  differ  in  nature  from  English 
local  legends  current  up  to  recent  times,  such  as  that  which 
relates  how  the  Romans,  coming  in  sight  of  where  Exeter 
now  stands,  exclaimed  in  delight,  "  Ecce  terra  !"  and  thus 
the  city  had  its  name.  Not  long  ago,  a  curious  enquirer 
wished  to  know  from  the  inhabitants  of  Furdinghridgc,  or 
as  the  country  people  call  it,  Fardenbridge,  what  the  origin 
of  this  name  might  be,  and  heard  in  reply  that  the  bridge 
was  thought  to  have  been  built  when  wages  were  so  cheap 
that  masons  worked  for  a  **  farden  "  a  day.  The  Falmouth 
folks'  stor}'  of  Squire  Pendarvis  and  his  ale  is  well  known, 
how  his  servant  excused  herself  for  selling  it  to  the  sailors, 
because,  as  she  said,  "  The  penny  come  so  quick,"  whence 
the  place  came  to  be  called  Pennycomeqnick ;  this  nonsense 
being  invented  to  account  for  an  ancient  Cornish  name, 
probrJjly  Penjjciungtcic,  "  head  of  the  creek  valley."  Mythic 
fancy  had  fallen  to  a  low  estate  when  it  dwindled  to  such 
remnants  as  this. 

That  personal  names  may  pass  into  nouns,  we,  who  talk 
of  hrounhams  and  hluchc-s,  cannot  deny.  But  any  such 
et3'mology  ought  to  have  contemporary  document  or  some 
equally  forcible  proof  in  its  favour,  for  this  is  a  form  of  ex- 
planation taken  by  the  most  fin  grant  myths.  David  the 
painter,  it  is  related,  had  a  promisiug  pupil  named  CJiicqnc, 
the  son  of  a  fruiterer ;  the  lad  died  at  eighteen,  but  his 
master  continued  to  hold  hnn  up  to  later  students  as  a 
model   of  artistic    cleverness,    and   hence   arose   the   now 


■I- 

1,1. 


'  Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth.'  vol.  i.  p.  43  ;  Lejean  in  '''"-'  des  Deux  Mondes,' 
15  Feb  1862.  p.  856  ;  Apollodor.  iii.  8.  Comjiaie  :')<■  uerivation  oiArequi/ia 
by  the  Peruvians  from  the  words  an/  quq)ay  =  '  yes  !  remain,'  said  to  have 
been  addressed  to  the  colonists  by  the  Inca  :  Markhani,  'Quiehua  Gr.  and 
Die.  ;'  al.so  the  supposed  etymology  of  Dahome,  Danh-ho-mcii  =  *oa  the  boUy 
of  Danh,'  from  the  story  of  King  Duko  building  his  palace  on  the  body  of  the 
conquered  King  Danh  :  Burton,  in  'Tr.  Eth.  Soc' vol.  iii.  p.  401 


il:  \    - 


MYTHOLOGY. 


31)7 


fire." 
ipezus 
in  the 
him.^ 
uglish 
which 
Exeter 
d  thus 
iquirer 
dge,  or 
origin 
bridge 
)  cheai) 
Iraouth 
known, 
sailors, 
whence 
onsense 
1  name. 
Mythic 
to  such 

who  talk 
ny  such 

or  some 
m  of  ex- 
•avid  the 

Ch'icqnc, 
I,  but  his 
!nts  as  a 

the   now 

ax  Mondes,' 

oiArfiqiiijia 

said  to  have 

hua  Gr.  and 

on  the  belly 

body  of  the 


familiar  term  of  chic.  Etymologists,  a  race  not  wanting 
in  eft'rontery,  have  hardly  ever  surpassed  this  circumstantinl 
canard  ;  the  word  chic  dates  at  any  rate  from  the  seventeenth 
century.^  Another  word  with  which  similar  liberty  has 
been  taken,  is  cafit.  Steele,  in  the  *  Spectator,"  says  that 
some  people  derive  it  from  the  name  of  one  Andrew  Caiif, 
a  Scotch  minister,  who  had  the  gift  of  preaching  in  such  a 
dialect  that  he  was  understood  by  none  but  his  own  congre- 
gation, and  not  by  all  of  them.  This  is,  perhaps,  not  a 
very  accurate  delineation  of  the  real  Andrew  Cant,  who  is 
mentioned  in  '  Whitelock's  Memorials,'  and  seems  to  hav  ■ 
known  how  to  speak  out  in  very  plain  terms  indeed.  But 
at  any  rate  he  flourished  about  1G50,  whereas  the  verb  to 
cant  was  then  already  an  old  word.  To  caiite,  meaning  to 
speak,  is  mentioned  in  Harman's  *  List  of  Rogues'  Words,' 
in  1566,  and  in  1587  Harrison  says  of  the  beggars  and 
gypsies  that  they  have  devised  a  language  among  them- 
selves, which  they  name  canting,  but  otliers  "  Pedlars' 
Frenche."  ^  Of  all  etymologies  ascribed  to  personnl 
names,  one  of  the  most  curious  is  that  of  the  Danse  Mn- 
cabre,  or  Dance  of  Death,  so  well  known  from  Holhein's 
pictures.  Its  supposed  author  is  thus  mentioned  in  tlio 
*  Biographie  Universelle : '  "  Macaber,  poete  allemand,  se- 
rait  tout-a-fait  inconnu  sans  I'ouvrage  qu'on  a  sous  sou 
nom."  This,  it  may  be  added,  is  true  enough,  for  tliei-e 
never  was  such  a  person  at  all,  the  Danse  Macabre  being 
really  Chorea  Machabaorum,  the  Dance  of  the  Maccabea^, 

'  Chamock,    'Verba   Nominalia,'   s.    v.   'chic;'    see    Fraucisque-.Miehrl, 

'  Algot,'  3.  V. 

'Spectator,'  No.  147  ;  Brand,  'Pop.  Ant.' vol.  iii.  p.  93  ;  Hotten,  'Slmi'^ 
Dictionary,'  p.  3;  Chamock,  s.  v.  'cant.'  As  to  tlie  real  otynii)lo^y,  that 
from  the  be^^gar's  whiiiing  chaunt  is  del'ective,  tor  the  be^^'gur  tlrojis  tlii.s  tone 
exactly  whm  he  cants,  i.  e..,  talks  jargon  with  his  fellows.  U  cant  is  (lirei:tly 
from  Liilin  caatare,  it  will  corri'spond  with  Italian  ainfare  and  French  clmnter, 
both  used  as  slang  words  for  to  sj)eak  (Francis([ue-Micliel,  '  Argot ').  A  Keltic 
origin  is  more  probable,  Gaelic  and  Irish  caiiDil,  caiiit  =  talk,  language,  dia- 
lect (see  Wedgwood  "  Etymological  Dictionary').  The  Gaelic  equivalents  for 
pedlars'  French  or  tramps'  slang,  are  '  Laidionn  nan  ceard,'  'aiinnt  clieard,' 
t.  e.,  tinkers'  Latin  or  jargon,  or  e.xactly  '  cairds' ca7U.'  A  deeper  conuexioa 
between  cainnt  and  cantare  does  not  ali'ect  this. 


H- 


:i 


b 


■***.  *.•..-- 


398 


MYTHOLOGY. 


nti' 


a  kind  of  pious  pantomime  of  death  performed  in  churches 
in  the  fifteenth  centmy.  Why  the  performance  received 
this  name,  is  that  the  rite  of  Mass  for  the  dead  is  distin- 
guished by  the  reading  of  that  passage  from  the  twelfth 
chapter  of  Book  II.  of  the  Mticcahecs,  which  relates  how  the 
people  betook  themselves  to  prayer,  and  besought  the  Lord 
that  the  sin  of  those  who  had  been  slain  among  them  might 
be  wholly  blotted  out ;  for  if  Judas  had  not  expected  that 
the  slain  should  rise  again,  it  had  been  superfluous  and 
vain  to  pray  for  the  dead.^  Traced  to  its  origin,  it  is  thus 
seen  that  the  Danse  Macabre  is  neither  more  nor  less  than 
the  Dance  of  the  Dead. 

It  is  not  an  unusual  thing  for  tribes  and  nations  to  be 
known  by  the  name  of  their  chief,  as  in  books  of  African 
travel  we  read  of  "  Eyo's  people,"  or  "  Kamrazi's  people." 
Such  terms  may  become  permanent,  like  the  name  of  the 
Osmanli  Turks  taken  from  the  great  Othman,  or  Osman. 
The  notions  of  kinship  and  chieftainship  may  easily  be  com- 
bined, as  where  some  individual  Brian  or  Alpine  may  have 
given  his  name  to  a  clan  of  O'Briens  or  Mac  Alpines.  How 
far  the  tribal  names  of  the  lower  races  may  have  been 
derived  from  individual  names  of  chiefs  or  forefathers,  is  a 
question  on  which  distinct  evidence  is  difficult  to  obtain.  In 
Patagonia  bands  or  subdivisions  of  tribes  are  designated  by 
the  names  of  temporary  chiefs,  every  roving  party  having 
such  a  leader,  who  is  sometimes  even  styled  **  yank,"  i.  e. 
"  father,"  ^  The  Zulus  and  Maoris  were  races  who  paid 
great  attention  to  the  traditional  genealogies  of  their  clan- 
ancestors,  who  were,  indeed,  not  only  their  kinsfolk  but  their 
gods  ;  and  they  distinctly  recognize  the  possibility  of  tribes 
being  named  from  a  deceased  ancestor  or  chief.  The  Kafir 
tribe  of  A  ma-Xosa  derives  its  name  from  a  chief,  U-Xosa ;  ' 
and  the  Maovi  tribes  of  Ngate-Wakaue  and  Nga-Puhi  claim 


n 


»  See  also  Francisquo-Midiel,  'Argot,'  8.  V.  'maccabe,  macchabee'  =  noy£. 
2  Musters,  '  Patagonians,'  p.  69,  184. 

'  Diihne,  '  Zulu  Die' p.  417  ;  Arbousset  and  Daunias,  p.  269 ;  Waitz,  vol.  ii- 
pp.  349,  352. 


1 1 


MYTHOLOGY. 


399 


irchea 

ceived 
iistin- 
;welfth 
ow  the 
e  Lord 
might 
d  that 
lis  and 
is  thus 
ss  than 

as  to  he 

African 
people." 
e  of  the 

Osman. 
r  be  com- 
nay  have 
!8.     How 
ave  been 
hers,  is  a 
btain.   In 
gnated  by 
ty  having 
ank,"  i.  «• 

who  paid 
iheir  clan- 
[k  but  their 
y  of  tribes 

The  Kafir 
,  U-Xosa:^ 
■Puhi  claim 

habee'  =  noy6. 
;  Waitz,vol.ii' 


descent  from  chiefs  called  Wakaue  and  Piihi.^  Around  this 
nucleus  of  actuality,  however,  there  gat  "s  an  enormous 
mass  of  fiction  simulating  its  eff'ects.  Ihe  myth-maker, 
curious  to  know  how  any  people  or  country  gained  its  name, 
had  only  to  conclude  that  it  came  from  a  great  ancestor  or 
ruler,  and  then  the  simple  process  of  turning  a  national  or 
locfil  title  into  a  personal  name  at  once  added  a  new  genealog}- 
to  historical  tradition.  In  some  cases,  the  name  of  the 
imagined  ancestor  is  invented  in  such  form  that  the  local  or 
gentile  name  may  stand  as  grammatically  derived  from  it,  as 
usually  happens  in  real  cases,  like  the  derivation  of  dssarea 
from  Casar,  or  of  the  Benedictines  from  Benedict.  But  in 
the  fictitious  genealogy  or  history  of  the  myth-maker,  the 
mere  unaltered  name  of  the  nation,  tribe,  country,  or  city 
often  becomes  without  more  ado  the  name  of  the  eponymic 
hero.  It  has  to  be  remembered,  moreover,  that  countries 
and  nations  can  be  personified  by  an  imaginative  process 
which  has  not  quite  lost  its  sense  in  modern  speed i.  France 
is  talked  of  by  politicians  as  an  individual  being,  with  par- 
ticular opinions  and  habits,  and  may  even  be  embodied  as  a 
statue  or  picture  with  suitable  attributes.  And  if  one  were 
to  say  that  Britannia  has  two  daughters,  Canada  and 
Australia,  or  that  she  has  gone  to  keep  house  for  a  decrepit 
old  aunt  called  India,  this  would  be  admitted  as  plain  fact 
expressed  in  fantastic  language.  The  invention  of  ancestries 
from  eponymic  heroes  or  name-ancestors  has,  however,  often 
had  a  serious  effect  in  corrupting  historic  trutli,  by  helping 
to  fill  ancient  annals  with  swarms  of  fictitious  genealogies. 
Yet,  when  surveyed  in  a  large  view,  the  nature  of  the  epony- 
mic fictions  is  patent  and  indisputable,  and  so  regular  are 
their  forms,  that  we  could  scarcely  choose  more  tellinc 
examples  of  the  consistent  processes  of  imagination,  as  shown 
in  the  development  of  myths. 

The  great  number  of  the  eponymic  ancestors  of  ancient 
Greek  tribes  and  nations  makes  it  easy  to  test  them  by  com- 
parison, and  the  test  is  a  destructive  one.     Treat  the  heroic 

»  Shortland,  'Trails,  of  N.  Z.'  p.  22i. 


\    \\ 


M 


■11 

II'     I' 


400 


MYTnOLOGY. 


ti    J 


||i 


!      1 


§     ■! 


^::    :     i, 


:.;ji' 


'■Hi  .:.  Hi 


genealof]^es  they  belong  to  as  traditions  founded  on  real 
history,  and  they  prove  hopelessly  independent  and  incoui- 
patible  ;  but  consider  them  as  mostly  local  and  tribal  myths, 
and  such  independence  and  incompatibility  become  their 
proper  features.  Mr.  Grote,  whose  tendency  is  to  treat  all 
mj'ths  as  fictions  not  only  unexplained  but  unexpliiinable, 
here  makes  an  exception,  tracing  the  eponymic  ancestors 
from  whom  Greek  cities  and  tribes  derived  their  legendary 
parentage,  to  mere  embodied  local  and  gentile  names.  Thus, 
of  the  fifty  sons  of  Lykuon,  a  whole  large  group  consists  of 
personified  cities  of  Arkadia,  such  as  Mantiiuhts,  PliifialoH, 
TefjeaU's,  who,  according  to  the  simpl}'  inverting  legend,  are 
called  founders  of  Mtuitinea,  Plihinlia,  Tefjea.  The  father 
of  King  iEakos  was  Zeus,  his  mother  his  ov  n  personified 
land,  .J^jfi'ina ;  the  city  of  Mykenai  had  not  only  f>n  ancestress 
Mykcne,  but  an  eponymic  ancestor  as  well,  Mifhhieus.  Long 
afterwards,  mediaeval  Europe,  stimulated  by  the  splendid 
genealogies  through  which  Rome  had  attached  herself  to 
Greece  and  the  Greek  gods  and  heroes,  discovered  the 
secret  of  rivalling  them  in  the  chronicles  of  Geoffry  of 
Monmouth  and  others,  by  claimir-i  as  founders  of  Paris  and 
Tours,  the  Trojans  Paris  and  Turnus,  and  connecting  France 
and  Britain  with  the  Trojan  war  through  Franctis,  son  of 
Hector,  and  Brutus,  great  grandson  of  .Eneas.  A  remark- 
ably perfect  eponymic  historical  myth  accounting  for  the 
Gypsies  or  Egyptians,  may  be  found  cited  seriously  in 
*  Blackstone's  Commentaries : '  when  Sultan  Selim  con- 
quered Egypt  in  1517,  several  of  the  natives  refused  to  sub- 
mit to  the  Turkish  yoke,  and  revolted  under  one  Zingnneus, 
whence  the  Turks  called  them  Zinganees,  but,  being  at  length 
surrounded  and  banished,  they  agreed  to  disperse  in  small 
parties  over  the  world,  etc.,  etc.  It  is  cvirious  to  watch 
Milton's  mind  emerging,  but  not  wholly  emerging,  from  the 
state  of  the  mediceval  chronicler.  He  mentions  in  the 
beginning  of  his  '  History  of  Britain,*  the  "  outlandish  fig- 
ment "  of  the  four  kings.  Magus,  Savon,  Druis,  and  Banlus ; 
he  has  no  approval  for  the  giant  Albion,  son  of  Neptune,  who 


■  I  _-. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


401 


subdued  the  island  and  called  it  after  bis  own  name ;  1, 
scoffs  at  the  four  sons  of  Japhet,  called  Francus,  Romcinu 
AleiiKinnus,  and  Dritto.     But  when  he  comes  to  Brutus  ai. 
the  Trojan  legends  of   old  English  history,  his  sceptical 
courage  fails  him  :  "those  old  and  inborn  names  of  succes- 
sive kings,  never  any  to  have  bin  real  persons,  or  don  in  their 
lives  at  least  som  part  of  what  so  long  hath  bin  remember'd, 
cannot  be  thought  without  too  strict  an  incredulity."^ 

Among  ruder  races  of  the  world,  asserted  genealogies  of 
this  class  may  be  instanced  in  South  American  tribes  called 
the  Anioipira  and  Potjjuara,^  Kliond  clans  called  Baska  and 
t/a/cso,''* Turkoman  hordes  called  Yomut,  Tekke,  &nd  Chuudor,* 
all  of  tliem  professing  to  derive  their  designations  from 
ancestors  or  chiefs  who  bore  as  individuals  these  very  names. 
Where  criticism  can  be  brought  to  bear  on  these  genealogies, 
its  effect  is  often  such  as  drove  Brutus  and  his  Trojans  out 
of  English  history.  When  there  appear  in  the  genealogy  of 
Haussa,  in  West  Africa,  plain  names  of  towns  like  Iudlo  and 
Katseiia,^  it  is  natural  to  consider  these  towns  to  have  been 
personified  into  mythic  ancestors.  Mexican  tradition  assigns 
a  whole  set  of  eponymic  ancestors  or  chiefs  to  the  various 
races  of  the  land,  as  Mexl  the  founder  of  Mexico,  Chlcld- 
mecatl  the  first  king  of  the  Chkhiuiecs,  and  so  forth,  down  to 
Otomitl  the  ancestor  of  the  Otoinls,  whose  very  name  by  its 
termination  betrays  its  Aztec  invention.*'  The  Brazilians 
account  for  the  division  of  the  Tupis  and  Guamnls,  by  tlie 
legend  of  two  ancestral  brothers,  l^upi  and  Guarani,  who 


H 


) , 


'  On  the  adoj)tion  of  imaginary  ancestors  as  connected  with  tlie  pR-tion  of  a 
common  descert,  and  the  inqiortant  jiolitieal  and  religious  elfuets  of  these 
proceedings,  see  especially  Grote,  '  History  of  Greece,  vol.  i.  ;  McLennan, 
'  Primitive  ilarriage  ; '  Maine,  'Ancient  Law.'  Interesting  details  on  epuuymic 
ancestors  in  Putt,  'Anti-Kaulen,  oder  Mythischo  Vorstellungen  vom  Ura- 
prunge  der  Viilker  und  Sprachen.' 

^  Martins,  '  Ethnog.  Amer.'  voL  i.  p.  54  ;  see  283. 

3  Macpherson,  '  India,'  p.  78. 

*  Vanib^ry,  *  Cential  Asia,'  p.  325  ;  see  also  Latham,  '  Descr.  Eth.'  vol.  L 
p.  456  (Ostyaks)  ;  Georgi,  '  Ueise  im  Russ.  Reich,*  voL  L  242  (Tuuguz), 

'  Harth,  'N.  &  Ceutr.  Afr.'  vol.  ii.  p.  7L 

•  J.  G.  Miiller,  'Amer   Urivlig.'  p.  674. 

VOL.    I.  I)  D 


ill 


i: 


» 


]l      ! 


I     r 


M 


fill   ! 


■I 


402 


MYTHOLOGY. 


quarrelled  and  scparsited,  each  with  his  followers  :  but  an 
eponymic  ori<>;in  of  the  story  is  made  likely  by  the  word 
(hinrtini  not  being  an  old  national  name  at  all,  but  merely 
the  designation  of  "  warriors  "  given  by  the  missionaries  to 
certain  tribes.^  And  when  such  facts  are  considered  as  that 
North  American  clans  named  after  animals,  Beaver,  Cray- 
fish,  and  the  like,  account  for  these  names  by  simply  claim- 
ing the  very  creatures  themselves  as  ancestors,^  the  tendency 
of  general  criticism  will  probably  be  not  so  much  in  favour 
of  real  forefathers  and  chiefs  who  left  their  names  to  their 
tribes,  as  of  eponymic  ancestors  created  by  backwards  imita- 
tion of  such  inheritance. 

The  examination  of  eponymic  legend,  however,  must  by 
no  means  stop  short  at  the  destructive  stage.  In  fact,  when 
it  has  Undergone  the  sharpest  criticism,  it  only  displays  the 
more  clearly  a  real  historic  value,  not  less  perhaps  than  if 
all  the  names  it  records  were  real  names  of  ancient  chiefs. 
With  all  their  fancies,  blunders,  and  shortcomings,  the  heroic 
genealogies  preserve  early  theories  of  nationality,  traditions 
of  migration,  invasion,  connexion  by  kindred  or  intercourse. 
The  ethnologists  of  old  days,  borrowing  the  phraseology  of 
niytli,  stated  what  they  looked  on  as  the  actual  relations  of 
races,  in  a  personifying  language  of  which  the  meaning  may 
still  be  readily  interpreted.  The  Greek  legend  of  the  twin 
brothers  Danaos  and  JEgyptos,  founders  of  the  nations  of 
the  Daiiaoi  or  Homeric  Greeks  and  of  the  J^gyptians^ 
represents  a  distinct  though  weak  ethnological  theory. 
Their  eponymic  myth  of  Hellen,  the  personified  race  of  the 
Hellenes,  is  another  and  more  reasonable  ethnological  docu- 
ment stating  kinship  among  four  great  branches  of  the 
Greek  race  :  the  three  sons  of  Hellen,  it  relates,  were 
Aiolos,  Doros,  and  Xouthos ;  the  first  two  gave  their  names 
to  the  kalians  and  Dorians,  the  third  had  song  called 
Achaios  and  Ion,  whose  names  passed  as  a  heritage  to  the 

*  Martins,  vol.  i.  pp.  180—4  ;  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  416. 

*  Schoolcraft,  *  Indian  Tribes,'  part  i.  p.  319,  part  iii.  p.  268,  see  part  iL 
p.  49 ;  Catlia,  vol.  ii.  p.  128  ;  J.  G.  Miiller,  pp.  134,  327. 


I 


MYTHOLOGY. 


403 


at  an 

word 
nerely 
lies  to 
US  til  at 

Cray- 
claini- 
ulency 
favour 
o  their 

iniita- 

nust  by 
t,  when 
ays  the 

than  if 
t  chiefs, 
e  heroic 
•aditions 
rcourse. 
iology  of 
Eitions  of 
ling  may 
the  twin 
itions  of 
gyptians, 

theory, 
ce  of  the 
cal  docu- 
is  of  the 
tes,  were 
jir  names 
ns  called 
ige  to  the 

see  part  iL 


Achdioi  and  loninnH.  The  belief  of  the  LyiViamf,  Myaianut 
and  Kar'ians  as  to  their  UiiticMial  kinship  is  woU  expressed 
in  the  geneab^gy  in  Herodotus,  which  traces  their  descent 
from  the  tlirce  brothers  Lydos,  Mysoa,  and  Kar.^  The 
Persian  legend  of  Feridun  (Tliraetaona)  and  his  three  sons, 
IreJ,  Tur,  and  Scbn,  distinguishes  the  two  nationalities  of 
Iranian  and  Turanian,  i.  e.  Persian  and  Tatar."  The  national 
genealogy  of  the  Afghans  is  worthy  of  remark.  It  runs 
thus:  Melik  Talut  (King  Saul)  had  two  sons,  Berkia  and 
Irmia  (Berekiah  and  Jeremiah),  who  served  David  ;  the  son 
of  Berkia  was  Afi/han,  and  the  son  of  Irmia  was  Uxhcl:, 
Thanks  to  the  a([niline  noses  of  the  Afghans,  and  to  their 
use  of  Biblical  personal  names  derived  from  Biblical  sources, 
the  idea  of  their  being  descendants  of  clie  lost  tribes  of 
Israel  found  great  credence  among  European  scholars  up  to 
the  present  century.^  Yet  the  pedigree  is  etbnologically 
absurd,  for  the  whole  source  of  the  imagined  cousinship  of 
the  Aryan  Afyhan  and  the  Turanian  Usbeic,  so  distinct  both 
in  feature  and  in  language,  appears  to  be  in  their  union  b}' 
common  Mohammedanism,  while  the  recUess  jumble  of 
sham  history,  which  derives  both  from  a  Semitic  source,  is 
only  too  characteristic  of  Moslem  chronicle.  Among  the 
Tatars  is  found  a  much  more  reasonable  national  pedigree  ; 
in  the  13th  centur}',  William  of  Ruysbroek  relates,  as  sober 
circumstantial  history,  that  they  were  originally  called 
Turks  from  Turk  the  eldest  son  of  Japhct,  but  one  of  their 
princes  left  his  dominions  to  his  twin  sons,  Tatar  and  Monyol, 
which  gave  rise  to  the  distinction  that  has  ever  sv  je  pre- 
vailed between  these  two  nations.*  Historically  absurd,  this 
legend  states  what  appears  the  unimpeachable  ethnological 

'  Grote,  'Hist,  of  Greece;'  Pausan.  iiL  20;  Dioa.  Sic.  v.  ;  Apollodor. 
Bibl.  i.  7,  3,  vi.  1,  4  ;  Herodot.  i.  171. 

2  Max  MuUer  in  Bunsen,  vol.  i.  p.  338 ;  Tabail,  part  i.  ch.  xlv.  Ixix. 

'  Sir  W.  Jones  in  'As.  Kes,' vol.  ii.  p.  24;  Vansitlart,  ibid.  p.  67;  see 
Campbell,  in  'Jourii.  As.  Soc,  Bengal,'  186(5,  part  ii.  p.  7- 

*  Gul  de  Rubruipiis  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  23  ;  Gabelentz  in  'Zeitsclir- 
fiir  die  Kunde  des  Morgenluudes,'  vol.  ii.  p.  73  ;  Schmidt,  '  Volker  Mittel, 
Asieu,'  p.  6. 

D  D  2 


!    i 


;  1 


404 


MYTHOLOGY. 


'     ;■■' 


\l    I' 


m 


fact,  that  the  Turks,  Monrjoh,  and  Tatars  are  closi-ly- 
connected  branches  of  one  national  stock,  and  we  can  only 
dispute  in  it  what  seems  an  exorbitant  chiim  on  the  part 
of  the  Turks  to  represent  the  head  of  the  family,  the 
ancestor  of  the  Monrjol  and  the  Tatar.  Thus  these  eponymic 
national  genealogies,  mythological  in  form  but  ethnological 
in  substance,  embody  opinions  of  which  we  may  admit  or 
deny  the  truth  or  value,  but  which  we  must  recognize 
as  distinctly  ethnological  documents.^ 

It  thus  appears  that  early  ethnology  is  habitually  ex- 
pressed in  a  metaphorical  language,  in  which  lands  and 
nations  are  personified,  and  their  relations  indicated  by 
terms  of  personal  kinship.  This  description  apjdies  to 
that  important  document  of  ancient  ethnology,  the  table  of 
nations  in  the  10th  chapter  of  Genesis.  In  some  cases  it  is 
a  problem  of  minute  and  difficult  criticism  to  distinguish 
among  its  ancestral  names  those  which  are  simply  local  or 
national  designations  in  personal  form.  But  to  critics  con- 
versant with  the  ethnic  genealogies  of  other  peoples,  such 
as  have  here  been  quoted,  simple  inspection  of  this  national 
list  maj'  suffice  to  show  that  part  of  its  names  are  not  names 
of  real  men,  but  of  personified  cities,  lands,  and  races. 
The  city  Z'idon  {)T'2)  is  brother  to  Heth  (nn)  t!ie  father  of 
the  Ililtites,  and  next  follow  in  person  the  Jebusite  and 
the  Amorite.  Among  ])lahi  names  of  countries,  Ciiah  or 
^Ethiopia  (W^D)  begets  Nimrod,  Asshur  or  Assifria  (m^^s) 
builds  Nineveh,  and  even  the  dual  Mlzraim  (D"'~i!ja),  the 
"two  Egypts "  (apparently  meaning  Upper  and  Lower 
Egypt,  the  "  two  lands,"  as  the  Egyptians  themselves  wrote 
it  in  their  inscriptions),  ai^pears  as  a  personal  son  and 
brother  of  other  countries,  and  ancestor  of  populations. 
The  Aryan  stock  is  clearly  recognized  in  personifications  of 
at  least  two  of  its  members,  Madai  0"TD)  the  Mede,  and 
Jaran  (p**)  the  Ionian.  And  as  regards  the  family  to  which 
the  Israelites  themselves  belong,  if  Canaan  0^33),  the  father 

'  See  also  Pott,  '  Anti-Kaulen,'  j>p.  19,  23  ;  '  Riissen,'  pp.  70,  153  ;  and  re- 
marks on  culunizatioii-iuytlis  in  Max  MUlIer,  'Chips,'  vul.  it.  p.  68. 


I !     -1  ■• :  j  ^ 


MYTHOLOGY. 


405 


closrly- 
?an  only 
he  part 
lily,  the 
ponymic 
lologiciil 
admit  or 
Bcognize 

lally  ex- 
nds  and 
:;ated  by 
)l)lies  to 
!  table  of 
ases  it  is 
^tinguish 
'  local  or 
Ltics  con- 
ies, such 
national 
ot  names 
races, 
itlier  of 
site    and 
CuhU  or 
la  (mL:;s) 
i:in),  the 
Lower 
^es  wrote 
son  and 
ulations. 
itions  of 
ede,  and 
,0  which 
16  father 

)3  ;  and  re< 


of  Zldon  (p^2J),  be  transferred  to  it  to  represent  the  Phoeni- 
cians, by  the  side  of  Asshur  (-ir^S),  Aram  (D"is),  Eher  ("1227), 
and  the  other  descendants  of  Shem,  the  result  will  be 
mainly  to  arrange  the  Semitic  stock  according  to  the  ordi- 
nary classification  of  modern  comparative  philology. 

Turning  now  from  cases  where  mytliologic  phrase  serves 
as  a  medium  for  exjjressing  philosophic  opinion,  let  us 
quickly  cross  the  district  where  fancy  assumes  the  sem- 
blance of  explanatory  legend.  The  mediteval  schoolmen 
have  been  justly  laughed  at  for  their  habit  of  translating 
plain  facts  into  the  terms  of  metaphysics,  and  then 
solemnly  offering  them  in  this  scientific  guise  as  explana- 
tions of  themselves — accounting  for  opium  making  people 
sleep,  by  its  possession  of  a  dormitive  virtue.  The  myth- 
maker's  proceedings  may  in  one  respect  be  illustrated  by 
comparing  them  with  this.  Half  mythology  is  occu[)ied,  as 
many  a  legend  cited  in  these  chapters  has  shown,  in  shaping 
the  familiar  facts  of  daily  hfe  into  imaginary  histories  ot" 
their  own  cause  and  origin,  childlike  answers  to  those  world- 
old  questions  of  whence  and  why,  which  the  savage  asks  as 
readily  as  the  sage.  So  familiar  is  the  nature  of  such  de- 
scription in  the  dress  of  history,  that  its  easier  examples 
translate  off  hand.  When  the  Samoans  say  that  ever  since 
the  great  battle  among  the  plaintains  and  bananas,  the 
vanquished  have  hung  down  their  heads,  while  the  victor 
stands  proudly  erect,^  who  can  mistake  the  simple  metaphor 
which  compares  the  upright  and  the  drooping  plants  to  a 
conqueror  standing  among  his  beaten  foes.  In  simile  just 
as  obvious  lies  the  origin  of  another  Polynesian  legend, 
which  relates  the  creation  of  the  coco-nut  from  a  man's 
head,  the  chestnuts  from  his  kidneys,  and  the  yams  from 
his  legs.*  To  draw  one  more  example  from  the  mythoh)gy 
of  plants,  how  transparent  is  the  Ojibwa  fancy  of  that 
heavenly  youth  with  green  robe  and  waving  feathers,  whom 
for  the  good  of  men  the  Indian  overcame  and  buried,  and 

*  Seeinann,  '  Viti,'  p.  311  ;  Tunicr,  '  Polynesia,'  p.  '252. 

•  Ellis,  '  Polyu.  lies.'  vol.  i.  p.  69. 


• 


i  : 


m 


fV  I. 


i      i'3 


MYTHOLOGY. 


who  sprang  again  from  his  grave  as  the  Indian  corn,  Mon- 
damin,  the  "  Spirit's  grain."  ^  The  New  Fm  (^st  peasant 
deems  that  the  marl  he  digs  is  still  red  with  the  blood  of 
his  ancient  foes  the  Danes;  the  Maori  sees  on  the  red  clift's 
of  Cook's  Straits  the  blood  stains  that  Kupe  made  when, 
mourning  for  the  death  of  his  daughter,  he  cut  his  forehead 
with  pieces  of  obsidian ;  in  the  spot  where  Buddlia  offered 
his  own  body  to  feed  the  starved  tigress's  cubs,  his  blood 
for  ever  reddened  the  soil  and  the  trees  and  flowers.  The 
modern  Albanian  still  sees  the  stain  of  slaughter  in  streams 
running  red  with  earth,  as  to  the  ancient  Greek  the  river 
that  flowed  by  Byblos  bore  down  in  its  summer  floods  the 
red  blood  of  Adonis.  The  Cornishman  knows  from  the  red 
film}'  growth  on  the  brook  pebbles  that  murder  has  been 
done  there ;  John  the  Baptist's  blood  still  grows  in 
Germany  on  his  day,  and  peasants  still  go  out  to  search  for 
it ;  the  red  meal  fungus  is  blood  dropped  by  the  flying 
Iluns  when  they  hurt  their  feet  against  the  high  tower- 
roofs.  The  traveller  in  India  might  see  on  the  ruined  walls 
of  Ganga  Baja  the  traces  of  the  blood  of  the  citizens  spilt 
in  the  siege,  and  yet  more  marvollous  to  relate,  at  St. 
Denis's  church  in  Cornwall,  the  blood-stains  on  the  stones 
fell  there  when  the  saint's  head  was  cut  off  somewhere  else.^ 
Of  such  translations  of  descriptive  metaphor  under  thin 
pretence  of  history,  every  collection  of  mj^th  is  crowded 
with  examples,  but  it  strengthens  our  judgment  of  the  com- 
bined consistency  and  variety  of  what  may  be  called  the 
mythic  language,  to  extract  from  its  dictionary  sucli  a  group 
as  this,  which  in  such  variously  imaginative  fashion  de- 
scribes the  appearance  of  a  blood-red  stain. 

'  Schoolcraft,  'Algic  Res.'  vol.  i.  p.  122 ;  'Indian  Tribes,' part  i.  p.  820, 
part  ii.  p.  230. 

«  J.  R.  Wise,  '  Tlie  New  Forest,'  p.  160  ;  Taylor,  '  New  Zealand,'  p.  268  ; 
Max  Jliillor,  '(.'hip.s,'  vol.  i.  p.  249;  M.  A.  Walker,  '  Macedcmia,'  p.  192; 
Movers,  '  I'libnizicr,'  vol.  i.  p  66.5  ;  Lucinn.  do  Deft  Syria,  8  ;  Hunt,  '  Pop. 
Rom.'  2nd  Series,  p.  16;  Wuttke,  '  Volksabergluuhe,'  pp.  16,  94;  Hastian, 
•  Mcnscli,'  vol.  ii.  p.  59,  vol.  iil  p.  185 ;  Buchanan,  '  Mysore,  etc'  in  Pinker* 
ton,  vol.  viii,  p.  714. 


MYTHOLOGV. 


407 


Mon- 

oiisiint 
ood  of 
d  cliffs 
^Yben, 
reliead 
offered 
5  blood 
.     The 
streams 
le  river 
ods  the 
the  red 
las  been 
rows    in 
2arch  for 
le   flying 
h  tower- 
led  walls 
ens  spilt 
J,  at  St. 
,ie  stones 
lere  else.^ 
der  thin 
crowded 
the  com- 
lalled  the 
1  a  group 
ihion   de- 


i.  p.  820, 

|nd,'  p.  268  ; 

kia,'  p.  192 ; 

lunt,  'Pop. 

[)4  ;  I5astiau, 

in  Pinker* 


The  merest  shadowy  fancy  or  broken-down  metaphor, 
when  once  it  gains  a  sense  of  reality,  may  begin  to  be 
spoken  of  as  an  actnal  event.  The  Moslems  have  heard  the 
very  stones  praise  Allah,  not  in  simile  only  but  in  fact,  and 
among  them  the  saying  that  a  man's  fate  is  written  on  his 
forehead  has  been  materialized  into  a  belief  that  it  can  be 
deciphered  from  the  letter-like  markings  of  the  sutures  of 
his  skull.  One  of  the  miraculous  passages  in  the  life  of 
Mohammed  himself  is  traced  plausibly  by  Sprenger  to  such 
a  pragmatized  metaphor.  The  angel  Gabriel,  legend 
declares,  opened  the  prophet's  breast,  and  took  a  black 
clot  from  his  heart,  which  he  washed  with  Zemzeni  water 
and  replaced;  details  are  given  of  the  angel's  dress  and 
golden  basin,  and  Anas  ibn  Malik  declared  he  had  seen  the 
very  mark  where  the  wound  was  sewn  uj).  We  may  venture 
with  the  historian  to  ascribe  this  marvellous  incident  to  the 
familiar  metaphor  that  Mohammed's  heart  was  divinely 
opened  and  cleansed,  and  indeed  he  does  say  in  the  Koran 
that  God  opened  his  heart.'  A  single  instance  is  enough  to 
represent  the  same  habit  in  Christian  legend.  Marco  Polo 
relates  how  in  1225  the  Khalif  of  Bagdad  commanded  the 
Chrivtians  of  his  dominions,  under  penalty  of  death  or 
Islam,  to  justify  their  Scriptural  text  by  removing  a  certain 
mountain.  Now  there  was  among  them  a  shoemaker,  who, 
having  been  tempted  to  excess  of  admiration  for  a  woman, 
had  plucked  out  his  offending  eye.  This  man  commanded 
the  mountain  to  remove,  wliicli  it  did  to  the  terror  of  the 
Khalif  and  all  his  people,  and  since  then  the  anniversary  of 
the  miracle  has  been  kept  holy.  Tlie  Venetian  traveller, 
after  the  manner  of  mediffival  writers,  records  the  story 
without  a  symptom  of  suspicion ;  "^  yet  to  our  minds  its 
whole  origin  so  obviously  lies  in  three  verses  of  St. 
Matthew's  gospel,  that  it  is  needless  to  quote  them.  To 
modern  taste  such  wooden  fictions  as  these  are  far  from 
attractive.     In  fact  the  pragnuitizer  is  a  stupid  creature  ; 

'  Sjtrengcr,  '  Leben  des  Mohammad,'  vol.  i.  pp.  78,  119, 162,  310. 
^  Marco  Polo,  book  i.  ch.  viii. 


>     ,11 


it 


'     ' 


408 


MYTHOLOGY. 


nothing  is  too  beautiful  or  too  sacred  to  be  made  dull  and 
vulgar  by  his  touch,  for  it  is  througli  the  very  incapacity  of 
his  mind  to  hold  an  abstract  idea  that  he  is  forced  to 
embody  it  in  a  material  incident.  Yet  wearisome  as  he 
may  be,  it  is  none  the  less  needful  to  understand  him,  to 
acknowledge  the  vast  influence  he  has  had  on  the  belief  of 
mankind,  and  to  appreciate  him  as  representing  in  its 
extreme  abuse  that  tendency  to  clothe  every  thouglit  in  a 
concrete  shape,  which  has  in  all  ages  been  a  mainspring  of 
mythology. 

Though  allegory  cannot  maintain  the  large  place  often 
claimed  for  it  in  mythology,  it  has  yet  had  too  much  influ- 
ence to  be  passed  over  in  this  survey.  It  is  true  that  the 
search  for  allegorical  explanation  is  a  pursuit  that  has  led 
many  a  zealous  explorer  into  the  quagmires  of  mysticism. 
Yet  there  are  cases  in  which  allegory  is  certainly  used  with 
historical  intent,  as  for  instance  in  the  apocryphal  Book  of 
Enoch,  with  its  cows  and  sheep  which  stand  for  Israelites, 
and  asses  and  wolves  for  Midianites  and  Egyptians,  these 
creatures  figuring  in  a  pseudo-jirophetic  sketch  of  Old 
Testament  chronicles.  As  for  moral  allegory,  it  is  im- 
mensely plentiful  in  the  world,  although  its  limits  are 
narrower  than  mythologists  of  past  centuries  have  sup- 
posed. It  is  now  reasonably  thought  preposterous  to  inter- 
pret the  Greek  legends  as  moral  apologues,  after  the  manner 
of  Hornkleides  the  philosopher,  who  could  discern  a  parable 
of  repentant  prudence  in  Athene  seizing  Achilles  when  just 
about  to  draw  his  sword  on  Agamemnon.'  Still,  such  a 
mode  of  interi)retation  has  thus  much  to  justify  it,  that 
numbers  of  the  fanciful  myths  of  the  world  are  really  alle- 
gories. There  is  allegory  in  the  Hesiodic  myth  of  Pandora, 
whom  Zeus  sent  down  to  men,  decked  with  golden  band 
and  garland  of  spring  flowers,  fit  cause  of  longing  and  the 
pangs  of  love,  but  using  with  a  dog-like  mind  her  gifts  of 
lies  and  treachery  and  pleasant  speech.  Heedless  of  his 
wiser  brother's  words,  the  foolish  Epimetheus  took  her ; 

Grote,  vol.  i.  p.  347. 


AnrTHOLOOY. 


4()!) 


ity  of 
sd  to 
as  he 
Ltn,  to 
lief  of 
in  its 
t  in  a 
•ing  of 

J  often 

1  influ- 

hat  the 

has  led 

sticism. 

;ed  with 

Book  of 

iraelites, 

IS,  these 
of  Old 

t  is  im- 

mits   are 

ave  sup- 
to  inter- 

e  manner 

a  parable 

A' hen  just 
,  such  a 
•y  it,  that 
eally  alle- 
Pandora, 
den  band 
and  the 
ler  gifts  of 
ess  of  his 
took  her; 


she  raised  the  lid  of  the  great  cask  and  shook  out  tlie  evils 
that  wander  among  mankind,  and  the  diseases  that  by  day 
and  niglit  come  silently  bringing  ill ;  she  set  on  tbe  lid 
again  and  shut  Hope  in,  that  evil  might  be  ever  hopeless  to 
mankind.  Shifted  to  fit  a  different  moral,  the  allegory 
remained  in  the  later  version  of  the  tale,  that  the  cask  held 
not  curses  but  blessings ;  these  were  let  go  and  lost  to  men 
when  the  vessel  was  too  curiously  opened,  while  Hope  alone 
was  left  behind  for  comfort  to  the  luckless  human  race.^ 
Yet  the  primitive  nature  of  such  legends  underlies  the 
moral  shape  upon  them.  Zeus  is  no  allegoric  fiction,  and 
Prometheus,  unless  modern  mythologists  judge  him  very 
wrongly,  has  a  meaning  far  deeper  than  parable.  Xenophon 
tells  (after  Prodikos)  tbe  story  of  Herakles  choosing  between 
the  short  and  easy  path  of  pleasure  and  the  long  and  toil- 
some path  of  virtue,^  but  though  the  mytliic  hero  may  thus 
be  made  to  figure  in  a  moral  apologue,  an  imngination  so 
little  in  keeping  with  his  unethic  nature  jars  upon  the 
reader's  mind. 

The  general  relation  of  allegory  to  pure  myth  can  hardly 
be  brought  more  clearly  into  view  than  in  a  class  of  stories 
famiUar  to  every  child,  the  Beast-fables.  From  the  ordi- 
nary civilized  point  of  view  the  allegory'  in  such  fictions  seems 
fundamental,  the  notion  of  a  moral  lesson  seems  bound  up 
with  their  ver}'  nature,  yet  a  broader  examination  tends  to 
prove  the  allegorical  growth  as  it  were  parasitic  on  an  older 
trunk  of  myth  without  moral.  It  is  only  by  an  effort  of  intel- 
lectual reaction  that  a  modern  writer  can  imitate  in  parable 
the  beast  of  the  old  Beast-fable.  No  wonder,  for  the 
creature  has  become  to  his  mind  a  monster,  only  con- 
ceivable as  a  caricature  of  man  made  to  carry  a  moral  lesson 
or  a  satire.  But  among  savages  it  is  not  so.  To  their 
minds  the  semi-human  beast  is  no  fictitious  creature,  in- 
vented to  preach  or  sneer,  he  is  all  but  a  reality.  Beast- 
fables  are  not  nonsense  to  men  who  ascribe  to  the  lower 
animals  a  power  of  speech,  and  look  on  them  as  partaking 

•  Welcker,  vol.  i.  p.  766.  ■  Xenoph.  Memorabilia,  ii.  1. 


\  'I 


k     i 


I    i  ! 


■I 


;.'■» 


!  !!' 


4X0 


MYTHOLOGY. 


of  moral  human  nature  ;  to  men  in  whose  eyes  anj'  wolf  or 
h3'a3na  may  probably  be  a  man-hvfena  or  a  werewolf;  to 
men  who  so  utterly  believe  "  that  the  soul  of  our  grandam 
might  haply  inhabit  a  bird  "  that  they  will  really  regulate 
their  own  diet  so  as  to  avoid  eating  an  ancestor  ;  to  men  an 
integral  part  of  whose  rel'gion  may  actually  be  the  worship 
of  beasts.  Such  beliefs  belong  even  now  to  half  mankind, 
and  among  such  the  beast-stories  had  their  first  home. 
Even  the  Australians  tell  their  quaint  beast-tales,  of  the 
Eat,  the  Owl,  and  the  fat  Blackfellow,  or  of  Pussy-brother 
who  singed  his  friends'  noses  while  they  were  asleep.' 
The  Kamcliadals  have  an  elaborate  myth  of  the  adventures 
of  their  stupid  deity  Kutka  witli  the  Mice  who  played  tricks 
upon  him,  such  as  painting  his  face  like  a  woman's,  so  that 
when  he  looked  in  the  water  he  fell  in  love  witli  himself.^ 
Beast-tales  abound  among  such  races  as  the  Polynesiiuis 
and  the  North  American  Indians,  who  value  in  them  inge- 
nuity of  incident  and  neat  adaptation  of  the  liabits  and 
characters  of  the  creatures.  Thus  in  a  legend  of  the  Flat- 
head  Indians,  the  Little  Wolf  found  in  cloudhmd  his  grand- 
sires  the  Spiders  with  their  grizzled  hair  and  long  crooked 
nails,  and  they  spun  balls  of  thread  to  let  him  down  to 
earth  ;  wlien  he  came  down  and  found  his  wife  the  Speckled 
Duck,  whom  the  Old  Wolf  had  taken  from  him,  she  fled  in 
confusion,  and  that  is  why  she  lives  and  dives  alone  to  this 
very  day.^  In  Guinea,  where  beast-foble  is  one  of  the  great 
staples  of  nntive  conversation,  the  following  story  is  told  as 
a  type  of  the  tales  which  in  this  way  account  for  peculiari- 
ties of  animals.  The  great  Engena-monkey  offered  his 
daughter  to  be  bride  of  the  champion  who  should  perforin 
the  feat  of  drinking  a  whole  barrel  of  rum.  The  dignified 
Elephant,  the  graceful  Leopard,  the  surly  Boar,  tried  the 
first  mouthful  of  the  fire-water,  and  retreated.  Then  the 
tiny  Telinga-monkey  came,  who  had  cunningly  hidden  in 

>  Olilficld  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  259. 

»  Stellcr,  'Kamtscliatka,']).  255. 

•  Wilson  in  '  Tr.  Eth.  Soc'  vol.  iv.  p.  306. 


MYTHOLOGY. 


411 


f  or 
;  to 
.(lam 
111  ate 
jn  an 
vsliip 
ildnil, 
[10  me. 
af  the 
rotlier 

sleep.^ 
jntnves 

[  triol^s 
so  that 
imself." 
nesi'.uis 
111  iiige- 
3its  and 
be  Flat- 
s  grand- 
crooked 
down  to 
Speckled 
le  fled  in 
to  this 
tlie  gveat 
is  told  as 
lec'uliavi- 
■ered   his 
d  perform 
dignihe'^ 
tried  the 
Then  the 
hidden  in 


tlie  long  grass  thousands  of  his  fellows  ;  he  took  his  first 
glass  and  went  away,  bnt  instead  of  his  coming  hack,  an- 
other just  like  him  came  for  the  second,  and  so  on  till  the 
barrel  was  emptied  and  Telinga  walked  off  with  tlie  Monkey- 
king's  daughter.  But  in  the  narrow  path  the  Elephant  and 
Leopard  attacked  him  and  drove  liim  off,  and  he  took  refuge 
in  the  highest  boughs  of  the  trees,  vowing  never  more  to 
live  on  the  ground  and  suffer  such  violence  and  injustice. 
This  is  why  to  this  day  the  little  telingas  are  only  found  in 
the  highest  tree-tops.^  Such  stories  have  been  collected  by 
scores  from  savage  tradition  in  iheir  original  state,  while  as 
yet  no  moral  lesson  has  entered  into  them.  Yet  the  easy 
and  natural  transition  from  the  story  into  the  parable  is 
made  among  savages,  perhaps  without  help  from  higher 
races.  In  the  Hottentot  Tales,  side  by  side  with  the  myths 
of  the  cunning  Jackal  tricking  the  Lion  out  of  the  best  of 
the  carcase,  and  getting  the  black  stripe  burnt  on  his  own 
back  by  carrying  off  the  Sun,  there  occurs  the  moral 
apologue  of  the  Lion  who  thought  himself  wiser  than  his 
Mother,  and  perished  by  the  Hunter's  spear,  for  want  of 
heed  to  her  warning  against  the  deadly  creature  whose  liead 
is  in  a  line  with  his  breast  and  shoulders.*^  So  the  Zulus 
have  a  thorough  moral  apologue  in  the  story  of  the  hyrax, 
W'ho  did  not  go  to  fetch  his  tail  on  the  day  when  tails  were 
given  out,  because  he  did  not  like  to  be  out  in  the  rain ;  he 
only  asked  the  other  animals  to  bring  it  for  him,  and  so  he 
never  got  it.'  Among  the  North  American  legends  of 
Manabozho,  there  is  a  fable  quite  /Esopian  in  its  humour. 
Manabozho,  transformed  into  a  Wolf,  killed  a  fat  moose, 
and  being  very  hungry  sat  down  to  eat.  But  he  fell  into 
great  doubts  as  to  where  to  begin,  for,  said  he,  if  I  begin  at 
the  head,  people  will  laugh  and  say,  he  ate  him  backwards, 


»  J.  L.  Wilson,  «  W.  Afr.'  p.  882. 

3  Bleek,  'Reynard  in  S.  Afr.'  pp.  6,  47,  67  (these  are  not  among  the 
Btories  which  seem  recently  borrowed  from  Europeans).  See  '  Early  History 
of  Mtinlfind,'  p.  10. 

'  Callaway,  'Zulu  Tales,'  vol.  i.  p.  366. 


:M    ^l 


1, 

1;; 
ti    : 

;     ■ 

U 

ri  ' 


I, 


If   i 


'i!   -i 


412 


MYTHOLOGY. 


but  if  I  begin  at  tlie  side  they  will  say,  he  ate  him  sideways. 
At  last  he  made  up  his  mind,  and  was  just  putting  a  delicate 
piece  into  his  mouth,  when  a  tree  close  by  creaked.  Stop, 
stop  !  said  he  to  the  tree,  I  cannot  eat  with  such  a  noise, 
and  in  spite  of  his  hunger  he  left  the  meat  and  climbed  up 
to  quiet  the  creaking,  but  was  caught  between  two  branches 
and  held  fast,  and  presently  he  saw  a  pack  of  wolves  coming. 
Go  that  way  !  Go  that  way  !  he  cried  out,  wh^  reupon  the 
wolves  said,  he  must  have  something  there,  or  he  would  not 
tell  us  to  go  another  way.  So  they  came  on,  and  found  the 
moose,  and  ate  it  to  the  bones  while  Manabozho  looked 
wistfully  on.  The  next  heavy  blast  of  wind  opened  the 
branches  and  let  him  out,  and  he  went  home  thinking  to 
himself  "  See  tbe  efi'ect  of  meddling  with  frivolous  things 
when  I  had  certain  good  in  my  possession."  ^ 

In  the  Old  World,  the  moral  Beast-fable  was  of  no  mean 
antiquity,  but  it  did  not  at  once  supplant  the  animal-m3'ths 
pure  and  simple.  Forages  the  European  mind  was  capable 
at  once  of  receiving  lessons  of  wisdom  from  the  iEsopian 
crows  and  foxes,  and  of  enjoying  artistic  but  by  no  means 
edifying  beast-stories  of  more  primitive  type.  In  fact  the 
Babrius  and  Plisedrus  collections  were  over  a  thousand  years 
old,  when  the  genuine  Beast-Epic  reached  its  fullest  growth 
in  the  incomparable  *  Reynard  the  Fox ; '  traceable  in  Jacob 
Grimm's  view  to  an  original  Frankish  composition  of  the 
12th  century,  itself  containing  materials  of  far  earlier  date.^ 
Reynard  is  not  a  didactic  poem,  at  least  if  a  moral  hangs  on 
to  it  here  and  there  it  is  oftenest  a  Macchiavellian  one ; 
nor  is  it  essentially  a  satire,  sharply  as  it  lashes  men  in 
general  and  the  clergy  in  particular.  Its  creatures  are  in- 
carnate qualities,  the  Fox  of  cunning,  the  Bear  of  strength, 
the  Ass  of  dull  content,  the  Sheep  of  guilelessness.  The 
charm  of  the  narrative,  which  every  class  in  mediae val 
Europe  delighted  in,  but  which  we  have  allowed  to  drop 
out  of  all  but  scholars'  knowledge,  lies  in  great  measure  in 

•  Schoolcraft,  '  Algic  Res.'  vol.  i.  p.  160  ;  see  43,  61. 

•  Jacob  Grimm,  '  Keinliart  Fuchs,'  Introd. 


MYTHOLOGY, 


413 


the  cleverly  sustained  combination  of  the  beast's  nature  and 
the  man's.  How  great  the  influence  of  the  Reynard  E[)ic 
was  in  the  middle  ages,  maybe  judj^ed  from  He  yntd'd,  Bruin, 
Chanticleer y  being  still  names  familiar  to  people  who  have 
no  idea  of  theii'  having  been  originally  names  of  the  cha- 
racters in  the  great  beast-fable.  Even  more  remarkable 
are  its  traces  in  modern  French.  The  donkey  has  its  name 
of  haudct  from  Baudoin,  Baldwin  the  Ass.  Common  French 
dictionaries  do  not  even  contain  the  word  goupil  {ndpcs), 
so  etlt'ctually  has  the  Latin  name  of  the  fox  been  driven  out 
of  use  by  his  Frankish  title  in  the  Beast-rji)ic,  Rag'inhard 
the  Counsellor,  Reinhart,  Reynard,  Renart,  renard.  The 
moralized  apologues  like  ^Esop's  which  Grimm  con- 
temptuously calls  *'  fables  thinned  down  to  mere  moral 
and  allegory,"  '*  a  fourth  watering  of  the  old  grapes  into  an 
insipid  moral  infusion,"  are  low  in  {esthetic  quality  as  com- 
pared with  the  genuine  beast-m^'ths.  Mythological  critics 
will  be  apt  to  judge  them  after  the  manner  of  the  child  wlio 
said  how  convenient  it  was  to  have  "  Moral "  prhited  in 
/Esop's  Fables,  that  everybody  might  know  what  to  skip. 

The  want  of  power  of  abstraction  which  has  ever  had 
such  disastrous  effect  on  the  beliefs  of  mankind,  confound- 
ing niyth  and  chronicle,  and  crushing  the  spirit  of  histor}' 
under  the  rubbish  of  literalized  tradition,  comes  very  clearly 
into  view  in  the  study  of  parable.  The  state  of  mind  of 
the  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind  Laura  Bridgman,  so  instructive 
in  illustrating  the  mental  habits  of  uneducated  though  full- 
sensed  men,  displays  in  an  extreme  form  the  difficulty  such 
men  have  in  comprehending  the  unreidity  of  any  story 
She  could  not  be  made  to  see  that  arithmetical  problems 
were  anything  but  statements  of  concrete  fact,  and  when 
her  teacher  asked  her,  "  If  you  can  buy  a  barrel  of  cider 
for  four  dollars,  how  much  can  you  buy  for  one  dollar  ? " 
she  replied  quite  simply,  "  I  cannot  give  much  for  cider, 
because  it  is  very  sour."^  It  is  a  suri)ribing  instance  of 
this  tendency  to  concretism,  that  among  people  so  civilized 
'  Account  of  Laura  BiidgiuaD,  p.  120. 


I  ! 


\      ! 


m 


iU 


MYTHOLOGY. 


ii  ■• 


as  the  Buddhists,  the  most  obviously  moral  beast-fables 
have  become  literal  incidents  of  sacred  history'.  Gautama, 
during  his  550  jatakas  or  births,  took  the  form  of  a  frog,  a 
fish,  a  crow,  an  ape,  and  various  other  animals,  and  so  far 
were  the  legends  of  these  transformations  from  mere  myth 
to  his  followers,  that  there  have  been  preserved  as  relics  in 
Buddhist  temples  the  hair,  feathers,  and  bones  of  the 
creiitures  whose  bodies  the  great  teacher  inhabited.  Now 
among  the  incidents  which  happened  to  Buddha  during 
his  series  of  animal  births,  he  appeared  as  an  actor  in  the 
familiar  fable  of  the  Fox  and  the  Stork,  and  it  was  he  who, 
when  he  was  a  Squirrel,  set  an  example  of  parental  virtue 
b}'  trying  to  dry  up  the  ocean  with  his  tail,  to  save  his 
young  ones  whose  nest  had  drifted  out  to  sea,  till  his  per- 
severing courage  was  rewarded  by  a  miracle.^  To  our 
modern  minds,  a  moral  which  seems  the  very  purpose  of  a 
story  is  evic'jnce  unfavourable  to  its  truth  as  fact.  But  if 
even  apologues  of  talking  birds  and  beasts  have  not  been 
safe  from  literal  belief,  it  is  clear  that  the  most  evident 
moral  can  have  been  but  slight  protection  to  parables  told 
of  possible  and  life-like  men.  It  was  not  a  needless  pre- 
caution to  state  explicitly  of  the  New  Testament  parables 
that  they  were  parables,  and  even  this  guard  has  not  availed 
entirely.  Mrs.  Jameson  relates  some  curious  experience  in 
the  following  passage  : — "  I  know  that  1  was  not  very 
young  when  I  entertained  no  more  doubt  of  the  substantial 
existence  of  Lazarus  and  Dives  than  of  John  the  Baptist 
and  Hero  i;  when  the  Good  Samaritan  was  as  real  a  per- 
sonage as  any  of  the  Apostles ;  when  I  was  full  of  sincerest 
pity  for  those  poor  foolish  Virgins  who  had  forgotten  to 
trim  their  lamps,  and  thought  them — in  my  secret  soul — 
rather  hardly  treated.  This  impression  of  the  literal  actual 
truth  of  the  parables  I  have  since  met  with  in  many  children, 
and  in  the  uneducated  but  devout  hearers  and  readers  of 


'  Bowriiig,  *Siam,'  vol.  i.  p.  313  ;  Hardy,  'Manual  of  Budhism,'  p.  98.  See 
the  fable  of  the  '  Crow  and  Pitcher,'  in  Plin.  x.  60,  and  Bastian,  '  Mensch,' 
vol.  i.  p.  76. 


MTTHOI.OGT. 


415 


the  Bible;  and  I  remember  that  when  I  once  tried  to 
explain  to  a  good  old  woman  the  proper  meaning;  of  the 
word  parable,  and  that  the  story  of  the  Prodij^al  Son  was 
not  a  fact,  she  was  scandalized — she  was  quite  sure  that 
Jesus  would  never  have  told  anything  to  his  disciples  that 
was  not  true.  Thus  she  settled  the  matter  in  her  own  mind, 
and  I  thought  it  best  to  leave  it  there  undisturbed."^  Nor, 
it  may  be  added,  has  such  misconception  been  confined  to 
the  minds  of  the  poor  and  ignorant.  St.  Lazarus,  patron 
saint  of  lepers  and  their  hospitals,  and  from  whom  the 
lazzarone  and  the  lazzaretto  take  their  name,  obviously 
derives  these  qualities  from  the  Lazarus  of  the  parable. 

The  proof  of  the  force  and  obstinacy  of  the  mythic  faculty, 
thus  given  by  the  relapse  of  parable  into  pseudo-history, 
may  conclude  this  dissertation  on  mj'thology.  In  its  course 
there  have  been  examined  the  processes  of  animating  and 
personifying  nature,  the  formation  of  legend  by  exaggera- 
tion and  perversion  of  fact,  the  stiffening  of  metaphor  by 
mistaken  realization  of  words,  the  conversion  of  speculative 
theories  and  still  less  substantial  fictions  into  pretended 
traditional  events,  the  passage  of  myth  into  miracle-legend, 
the  definition  by  name  and  place  given  to  any  floating 
imagination,  the  adaptation  of  mythic  incident  as  moral 
example,  and  the  incessant  crystallization  of  story  into 
history.  The  investigation  of  these  intricate  and  devious 
operations  has  brought  ever  more  and  more  broadly  into 
view  two  principles  of  mythologic  science.  The  first  is  that 
legend,  when  classified  on  a  sufficient  scale,  displays  a 
regularity  of  development  which  the  notion  of  motiveless 
fancy  quite  fails  to  account  for,  and  which  must  be  attri- 
buted to  laws  of  formation  whereby  every  story,  old  and 
new,  has  arisen  from  its  definite  origin  and  sufficient  cause. 
So  uniform  indeed  'S  such  development,  tliat  it  becomes 
possible  to  tveat  myth  iis  an  organic  product  of  mankind  at 
large,  in  wiich  individual,  national,  and  even  racial  dis- 
tinctions stand   subordinai3  to  universal  qualities  of  the 

•  Jameson,  '  History  of  Our  Lord  iu  Art,'  vol.  i.  p.  375. 


\       I 


>  I 


I 


41U 


MYTHOLOGY. 


I  i 


't>^i 


'I; 


human  mind.  The  second  principle  concerns  the  relation 
of  myth  to  history.  It  is  true  that  the  search  for  mutilated 
and  mystified  traditions  of  real  events,  which  formed  so 
main  a  part  of  old  mythological  researches,  seems  to  grow 
more  hopeless  the  farther  the  study  of  legend  extends. 
Even  the  fragments  of  real  chronicle  found  embedded  in 
the  mythic  structure  are  mostly  in  so  corrupt  a  state,  that, 
far  from  their  elucidating  history,  they  need  history  to 
elucidate  them.  Yet  unconsciously,  and  as  it  were  in  spite 
of  themselves,  the  shapers  and  transmitters  of  poetic  legend 
have  preserved  for  us  masses  of  sound  historical  evidence. 
Thoj'  moulded  into  mythic  lives  of  gods  and  heroes  their 
own  ancestral  heirlooms  of  thought  and  word,  they  displayed 
in  the  structure  of  their  legends  the  operations  of  their  own 
minds,  they  placed  on  record  the  arts  and  manners,  the 
philosophy  and  religion  of  their  own  times,  times  of  which 
formal  history  has  often  lost  the  very  memor}'.  Myth  is 
the  history  of  its  authors,  not  of  its  subjects  ;  it  records  the 
lives,  not  of  superhuman  heroes,  but  of  poetic  nations. 


IB' '  !" 'SiwiA  '  ■  • ' :   ik    ;' 


lit      •       '"w 


CHAPTER  XI. 


ANIMISM. 


Relii^oas  Ideas  generally  appear  among  low  races  of  Mankind — Negatu 
statements  on  this  .subjt;(!t  frequently  misloiiilins^  and  mistaken  :  niiiuv 
cases  uncertain— Minimum  ileliiiition  of  Ri-li'^ion — Doctrine  of  Spiritual 
Beings,  here  termed  Animism — Animism  treated  as  Iwloni^ing  to  Matural 
Religion— Animism  divided  into  two  sections,  the  philosophy  of  ."rouls, 
and  of  oth'jr  Spirits — Doctrine  of  Souls,  its  prevalence  and  delinition 
among  the  lower  races  — Definition  of  Apparitional  Soul  or  Ghost-Soul  — 
It  is  a  theoretical  conception  of  primitive  Pliilosophy,  disij^nod  to 
account  for  phenomena  now  classed  uniler  Biology,  especially  l-ifo  and 
Death,  Health  and  Disease,  Sleup  and  Dreams,  Trance  and  Vi>ions — 
Relation  of  Soul  in  name  and  nature  to  Shallow,  Blood,  Breath  - 
Division  or  Plui'ality  of  Souls — Soul  cause  of  Life  ;  its  restoration  to  hody 
when  supposed  absent — Exit  of  Soul  iu  Trances  -Dreams  and  V'^isions  : 
theory  of  exit  of  dreamer's  or  seer's  own  soul  ,  the  iry  of  visits  recieived 
by  them  from  otlier  souls — Ghost-Soul  seen  in  A]>paritions -Wraiths 
and  Doubles — Soul  has  form  of  body;  sutfi-rs  mutilation  witii  it — Voice 
of  Ghost — Soul  treated  and  defined  as  of  Material  Substance  ;  this 
appears  to  be  the  original  doctrine — Transmission  of  Souls  to  service  in 
future  life  by  Funeral  Sacrifice  of  wives,  attendants,  ^tc.  —Souls  of 
Animals— Their  transmission  by  Funeral  Sacrifice  -Souls  of  I'lants — 
Souls  of  Objects— Th'ir  transmission  by  Funeral  Sacrifice — Kelatiou  of 
savage  doctrine  of  Object-Souls  to  Epicurean  theory  of  Ideas— Historical 
develo])ment  of  Doctrine  of  Souls,  from  the  Etiiereal  Soul  of  primitive 
Biology  to  the  Immaterial  Soul  of  modern  Theology. 

Ark  there,  or  have  there  been,  tribes  of  men  so  low  in 
culture  as  to  have  no  religious  conceptions  whatever  ^  This 
is  practically  the  question  of  the  universality  of  religion, 
which  for  so  many  centuries  has  been  affirmed  and  denied, 
with  a  confidence  in  striking  contrast  to  the  imperfect  evi- 
dence on  which  both  affirmation  and  denial  have  been 
based.  Ethnographers,  if  looking  to  a  theory  of  develop- 
ment to  explain  civilization,  and  regarding  its  sucoessiv;; 

VOL.    L  K   K 


li 


I' 


•r     i 


i   I 


:;   I 


418 


ANIMISM. 


stages  as  arising  one  from  another,  would  receive  witli  pe- 
culiar interest  accounts  of  tribes  devoid  of  all  religion. 
Hci'e,  they  would  naturally  say,  are  men  who  have  no  reli- 
gion because  their  forefathers  had  none,  men  who  represent 
a  prae-religious  condition  of  the  human  race,  out  of  which 
in  the  course  of  time  religious  conditions  have  arisen.  It 
does  not,  however,  seem  advisable  to  start  from  this  ground 
in  an  investigation  of  religious  development.  Though  the 
theoretical  niche  is  ready  and  convenient,  the  actual  slatue 
to  fill  it  is  not  forthcoming.  The  case  is  in  some  degree 
similar  to  that  of  the  tribes  asserted  to  exist  without  language 
or  without  the  use  of  fire  ;  nothing  in  the  nature  of  things 
seems  to  forbid  the  possibility  of  such  existence,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  tribes  are  not  found.  Thus  the  assertion 
that  rude  non-religious  tribes  have  been  known  in  actual 
existence,  though  in  theory  possible,  and  perhaps  in  fact 
true,  does  not  at  present  rest  on  that  sufficient  proof 
which,  for  an  exceptional  state  of  things,  we  are  entitled  to 
demand. 

It  is  not  unusual  for  the  very  writer  who  declares  in 
general  terms  the  absence  of  religious  phenomena  among 
some  savage  people,  himself  to  give  evidence  that  shows 
his  expressions  to  be  misleading.  Thus  Dr.  Lang  not  only 
declares  that  the  aborigines  of  Australia  have  no  idea  of  a 
supreme  divinity,  creator,  and  judge,  no  object  of  worship, 
no  idol,  temple,  or  sacrifice,  but  that  "  in  short,  they  have 
nothing  whatever  of  the  character  of  religion,  or  of  reli- 
gious observance,  to  distinguish  them  from  the  beasts  that 
perish."  More  than  one  writer  has  since  made  use  of  this 
telling  statement,  but  without  referring  to  certain  details 
which  occur  in  the  very  same  book.  From  these  it  appears 
that  a  disease  like  small-pox,  which  sometimes  attacks  the 
natives,  is  ascribed  by  them  "  to  the  influence  of  Budyah, 
an  evil  spirit  who  delights  in  mischief;"  that  when  the 
natives  rob  a  wild  bees'  hive,  they  generally  leave  a  little  of 
the  honey  for  Buddai ;  that  at  certain  biennial  gatherings 
of  the  Queehsland  tribes,  young  girls  are  slain  in  sacrifice 


ANIMISM. 


419 


to  propitiate  some  evil  divinity ;  and  that,  lastly,  according 
to  the  evidence  of  the  Rev.  W.  Ridley,  "  whenever  he  has 
conversed  with  the  aborigines,  he  found  them  to  have  de- 
finite traditions  concerning  supernatural  beings — Baiame, 
whose  voice  tliey  hear  in  thunder,  and  who  made  all  things, 
Turrainullun  the  chief  of  demons,  who  is  the  author  of 
diser.sG,  mischief,  and  wisdom,  and  appears  in  the  form  of  a 
serpent  at  their  great  assemblies,  etc."  ^  By  the  concurring 
testimony  of  a  crowd  of  observers,  it  is  known  that  the 
natives  of  Australia  were  at  their  discovery,  and  have  since 
remained,  a  race  with  minds  saturated  with  the  most  vivid 
belief  in  souls,  demons,  and  deities.  In  Africa,  Mr.  Moffiit's 
declaration  as  to  the  Bechuanas  is  scarcely  less  surprising 
— that  "man's  immortality  was  never  heard  of  among  that 
people,"  he  having  remarked  in  the  sentence  next  before, 
that  the  word  for  the  shades  or  manes  of  the  dead  is 
"liriti."^  In  South  America,  again,  Don  Felix:  de  Azara 
comments  on  the  positive  falsity  of  the  ecclosiastics'  ass^u'- 
tion  that  the  native  tribes  have  a  religion.  He  simply 
declares  that  they  have  none  ;  nevertheless  in  the  course  of 
his  work  he  mentions  such  facts  as  that  the  Payaguas  bury 
arms  and  clothing  with  their  dead  and  have  some  notions 
of  a  future  life,  and  that  the  Guanas  believe  in  a  Being  who 
rewards  good  and  punishes  evil.  In  fact,  this  author's 
reckless  denial  of  religion  and  law  to  the  lower  races  of  this 
region  justifies  D'Orbigny's  sharp  criticism,  that  "  this  is 
indeed  what  he  says  of  all  the  nations  he  describes,  while 
actually  proving  the  oontrary  of  his  thesis  by  the  very  facts 
he  alleges  in  its  support."^ 

Such  cases  show  how  deceptive  are  judgments  to  which 
breadth  and  generality  are  given  by  the  use  of  wide  words  in 
narrow  senses.  Lang,  Mofi'at,  and  Azara  are  authors  to  whom 
ethnography  owes  much  valuable  knowledge  of  the  tribes 

'  J.  D.  Lang,  'Queensland,'  pp.  340,  374,  380,  383,  444  (Buddai  appears, 
p.  879,  as  causing;;  a  deluge  ;  he  is  probably  identical  with  Budyah). 

»  Moirat,  'South  Africa, 'p.  201. 

'  Azara,  '  Voy.  dans  rAmdriquo  Mdridionnle,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  3,  14,  25,  51,  60, 
91,  119,  etc.  ;  D'Orbigny,  '  L'Homnie  Am(5ricain,' vol.  ii.  p.  318. 

E  a  2 


1^ 


j  j'l 


Ii 


I 


,11 


M, 


420 


ANIMISM. 


'(   i 


they  visited,  but  they  seem  hardly  to  have  recognized  any« 
thing  short  of  the  organized  and  established  theology  of  the 
higher  races  as  being  religion  at  all.  They  attribute  irre- 
ligion  to  tribes  whose  doctrines  are  unlilie  theirs,  in  much 
the  same  manner  as  theologians  have  so  often  attributed 
atheism  to  those  whose  deities  differed  from  their  own,  from 
the  time  when  the  ancient  invading  Ar3'ans  described  the 
aboriginal  tribes  of  India  as  adeva,  i.  e.,  "godless,"  and 
the  Greeks  fixed  the  corresponding  term  aOeoi.  on  the  early 
Christians  as  unbelievers  in  the  classic  gods,  to  the  com- 
paratively modern  ages  when  disbelievers  in  witchcraft  and 
apostolical  succession  were  denounced  as  atheists  ;  and  down 
to  our  own  day,  when  controversialists  are  apt  to  infer,  as  in 
past  centuries,  that  naturalists  who  support  a  theory  of 
development  of  species  therefore  necessarily  hold  atheistic 
opinions.^  These  are  in  fact  but  examples  of  a  general 
perversion  of  judgment  in  theological  matters,  among  the 
results  of  which  is  a  popular  misconception  of  the  religions 
of  the  lower  races,  simply  amazing  to  students  who  have 
reached  a  higher  point  of  view.  Some  missionaries,  no 
doubt,  thoroughly  understand  the  minds  of  the  savages 
they  have  to  deal  with,  and  indeed  it  is  from  men  like 
Cranz,  Dobrizhoffer,  Charlevoix,  Ellis,  Hardy,  Callaway, 
J.  R.  Wilson,  T.  Williams,  that  we  have  obtained  our  best 
knowledge  of  the  lower  phases  of  religious  belief.  But  for 
the  most  part  the  "religious  world"  is  so  occupied  in 
hating  and  despising  the  beliefs  of  the  heathen  whose  vast 
regions  of  the  globe  are  painted  black  on  the  missionary 
maps,  that  they  have  little  time  or  capacity  left  to  under- 
stand them.  It  cannot  be  so  with  those  who  fairly  seek  to 
comprehend  the  nature  and  meaning  of  the  lower  phases  of 
religion.  These,  while  fully  alive  to  the  absurdities  be- 
lieved and   the  horrors  perpetrated  in  its  name,  will  yet 

»  Muir,  'Sanskrit  Texts,'  part  ii.  p.  435;  Euseb.  'Hist.  Eccl'  iv.  15; 
Bingham,  book  i.  ch.  ii.  ;  Vanini,  '  De  AdniirnndiB  Naturse  Arcanis,'  dial.  37  ; 
Lecky,  'Hist  of  Kutionalism,'  vol.  i.  p.  126;  Encyclop.  Brit.  s.  v.  'Super- 
«titiou.' 


ANIMISM. 


421 


1 


regard  with  kin  lly  interest  all  record  of  men's  earnest 
seeking  after  truth  with  such  light  as  they  could  find.  Such 
students  will  look  for  meaning,  however  crude  and  childish, 
at  the  root  of  doctrines  often  most  dark  to  the  believers 
who  accept  them  most  zealously;  they  will  search  for  the 
reasonable  thought  which  once  gave  hfe  to  observances  now 
become  in  seeming  or  reality  the  most  abject  and  super- 
stitious folly.  The  reward  of  these  enquirers  will  be  a 
more  rational  comprehension  of  the  faiths  in  whose  midst 
they  dwell,  for  no  more  can  he  who  understands  but  one 
religion  un'le^stand  even  that  religion,  than  the  man  who 
loiows  but  ^ne  language  can  understand  that  language.  No 
religion  of  mankind  lies  in  utter  isolation  from  the  rest, 
and  the  thoughts  and  principles  of  modern  Ciiristianity 
are  attached  to  intellectual  clues  which  run  back  through 
far  prse-Christian  ages  to  the  very  origin  of  human  civili- 
zation, perhaps  even  of  human  existence. 

Wliile  observers  who  have  had  fair  opportunities  of  study- 
ing the  religions  of  savages  have  thus  sometimes  done  scant 
justice  to  the  facts  before  their  eyes,  the  hasty  denials  of 
others  who  have  judged  without  even  facts  can  carry  no 
great  weight.  A  IGth-century  traveller  gave  an  account  of 
the  natives  of  Florida  wliich  is  t^'pical  of  such  :  "  Touching 
the  religion  of  this  people,  which  wee  have  found,  for  want 
of  their  language  wee  could  not  understand  neither  by  signs 

nor  gesture  that  they  had  nuy  religion  ^r  lawe  at  all 

We  suppose  that  they  have  no  religion  at  all,  and  that  they 
live  at  their  own  libertie."  ^  Better  knowledge  of  these 
Floridans  nevertheless  showed  that  they  had  a  n  ligion,  and 
better  knowledge  has  reversed  many  another  hasty  asser- 
tion to  the  same  effect ;  as  when  writers  used  to  declare 
that  the  natives  of  Madagascar  had  no  idea  of  a  future  state, 
and  no  word  for  soul  or  spirit ;  ^  or  when  Danii)ier  invjuired 
after  the  religion  of  the  natives  of  Timor,  and  was  told 

*  J.  de  Verraznno  in  Hnklnyt,  vol.  iii.  p.  300. 

•  See  Ellis,  *  Madagascar,'  vol.  i.  p.  429  ;  Flacourt,  '  Hiat.  de  Madagascar, 
p.  59. 


1! 


'    \ 


r. 


\i  i: 


li  '11 


422 


ANIMISM. 


thiit  they  had  none  ;  ^  or  when  Sir  Thomas  Roe  landed  in 
Saldanha  Ba}'  on  his  way  to  the  court  of  the  Great  Mogul, 
and  remarked  of  the  Hottentots  that  **  they  have  left  off 
their  custom  of  stealing,  but  know  no  God  or  religion."  ' 
Among  the  numerous  accounts  collected  by  Sir  John  Lub- 
bock as  evidence  bearing  on  the  absence  or  low  develop- 
ment of  religum  among  low  races,^  some  may  be  selected 
as  lying  open  to  criticism  from  this  point  of  view.  Thus 
the  statement  that  the  Samoan  Islanders  had  no  religion 
cannot  stand,  in  face  of  the  elaborate  description  by  the 
Rev.  G.  Turner  of  the  Samoan  religion  itself;  and  the 
assertion  that  the  Tupinambas  of  Brazil  had  no  religion  is 
one  not  to  be  received  without  some  more  positive  proof, 
for  the  religious  doctrines  and  practices  of  the  Tupi  race 
have  been  recorded  b}^  Lery,  De  Laet,  and  other  writers. 
Even  with  much  time  and  care  and  knowledge  of  language, 
it  is  not  always  easy  to  elicit  from  savages  the  details  of 
their  theology.  They  try  to  hide  from  the  prying  and  con- 
temptuous foreigner  their  worship  of  gods  who  seem  to 
shrink,  like  their  worshippers,  before  the  white  man  and  his 
mightier  Deity.  Mr.  kSproat's  experience  in  Vancouver's  Is- 
land is  an  apt  example  of  this  state  of  things.  He  says : 
*'  I  was  two  years  among  the  Ahts,  with  m}' mind  constant^ 
directed  towards  the  subject  of  their  religious  beliefs,  before 
I  could  discover  that  they  possessed  any  ideas  as  to  an 
overruling  power  or  a  future  state  of  existence.  The  traders 
on  the  coast,  and  other  persons  well  acquainted  with  the 
people,  told  me  that  they  had  no  such  ideas,  and  this 
opinion  was  confirmed  by  conversation  with  many  of  the 
less  intelligent  savages  ;  but  at  last  I  succeeded  in  getting 
a  satisfactory  clue."*  It  then  appeared  that  the  Ahts  had 
all  the  time  been  hiding  a  whole  characteristic  system  of 
religious  doctrines  as  to  souls  and  their  migrations,  the 

1  Dampior,  'Voyages,'  vol.  ii.  ])art  ii.  p.  76. 
'  Koe  in  Pinkorton,  vol.  viii.  p.  2. 

»  Lubbock,  'Prehistoric  Times,'  p.  664  :  see  also  'Origin  of  Cirilization,' 
p.  138. 

'  Sproat,  '  Scenes  and  Studies  of  Savage  Life,'  p.  205. 


i! ' 


ANIMISM. 


423 


jr's  Is- 


ns, 


the 


spirits  who  do  good  and  ill  to  men,  and  the  great  gods  above 
all.  Thus,  even  where  no  positive  proof  of  religious  ideas 
among  any  particular  tribe  has  reached  us,  we  should  dis- 
trust its  denial  by  observers  whose  acquaintance  with  the 
tribe  in  question  has  not  been  intimate  as  well  as  kindly. 
Assertions  of  this  sort  are  made  very  carolesslj'.  Thus  it 
is  said  of  the  Andaman  Islanders  that  they  have  not  the 
rudest  elements  of  a  religious  faith  ;  Dr.  Mouat  states  this 
explicitly,^  yet  it  appears  that  the  natives  did  not  even 
display  to  the  foreigners  the  rude  music  which  they  actually 
possessed,  so  that  they  could  scarcely  have  been  expected  to 
be  communicative  as  to  their  theology,  if  they  had  any.  In 
our  time  the  most  striking  negation  of  the  religion  of  savage 
tribes  is  that  published  b}'  Sir  Samuel  Baker,  in  a  paper 
read  in  18G6  before  the  Ethnological  Society  of  London,  as 
follows :  *'  The  most  northern  tribes  of  the  ^Vhito  Nile  are 
the  Dinkas,  Shillooks,  Nuehr,  Kytch,  Bolir,  Aliab,  and 
Shir.  A  general  description  will  suffice  for  the  whole, 
excepting  the  Kytch.  Without  any  exception,  they  are 
without  a  belief  in  a  Supreme  Being,  neither  have  they  any 
form  of  worship  or  idolatry ;  nor  is  the  darkness  of  their 
minds  enlightened  b}''  even  a  ray  of  superstition."  Had  this 
distinguished  explorer  spoken  only  of  the  Jjatukas,  or  of 
other  tribes  hardly  known  to  ethnographers  except  through 
his  own  intercourse  with  them,  his  denial  of  any  religious 
consciousness  to  them  would  have  been  at  least  entitled  to 
stand  as  the  best  procurable  account,  until  more  intimate 
communication  should  prove  or  disprove  it.  But  in  sjjeak- 
ing  thus  of  comparatively  well  known  tribes  such  as  the 
Dinkas,  Shilluks,  and  Nuehr,  Sir  S.  Baker  ignores  the 
existence  of  published  evidence,  such  as  describes  the 
sacrifices  of  the  Dinkas,  their  belief  in  good  and  evil  spirits 
(adjok  and  djyok),  their  good  deity  and  heaven-dwelling 
creator,  Dendid,  as  likewise  Near  the  deity  of  the  Nuehr, 
and  the  Shilluks*  creator,  who  is  described  as  visiting,  like 
other  spirits,   a  sacred  wood   or   tree.     Kaufmann,  Brun- 

*  Mouut,  '  Aiidiiiiian  Islanders,'  pp.  2,  27!),  300. 


H. 


424 


ANIMISM. 


I    ii 


.■■i 


RoUet,  Lejean,  and  other  observers,  had  thus  placed  on 
record  details  of  the  religion  of  these  White  Nile  tribes, 
years  before  Sir  S.  Baker's  rash  denial  that  they  had  any 
rehgion  at  all.^ 

The  first  requisite  in  a  systematic  study  of  the  religions 
of  the  lower  races,  is  to  lay  down  a  rudimentary  definition 
of  religion.  By  requiring  in  this  definition  the  belief  in  a 
supreme  deity  or  of  judgment  after  death,  the  adoration  of 
idols  or  the  practice  of  sacrifice,  or  other  partially- difi'used 
doctrines  or  rites,  no  doubt  many  tribes  may  be  excluded 
from  the  category  of  religious.  But  such  narrow  definition 
has  the  fault  of  identifying  religion  rather  with  particular 
developments  than  with  the  deeper  motive  which  underlies 
them.  It  seems  best  to  fall  back  at  once  on  this  essential 
source,  and  simply  to  claim,  as  a  minimum  definition  of 
Religion,  the  belief  in  Spiritual  Beings.  If  this  standard 
be  ai)plied  to  the  descriptions  of  low  races  as  to  religion, 
the  following  results  will  appear.  It  cannot  be  positively 
asserted  that  every  existing  tribe  recognizes  the  belief  in 
si)iritual  beings,  for  the  native  condition  of  a  considerable 
number  is  obscure  in  this  respect,  and  from  the  rapid  change 
or  extinction  they  are  undergoing,  may  ever  remain  so.  It 
would  be  yet  more  unwiirranted  to  set  down  every  tribe 
mentioned  in  history,  or  known  to  us  by  the  discovery  of 
antiquarian  relics,  as  necessarily  having  possessed  the 
defined  minimum  of  religion.  Greater  still  would  be  the 
unwisdom  of  declaring  such  a  rudimentary  belief  natural  or 
instinctive  in  all  human  tribes  of  all  times  ;  for  no  evidence 


'  Baker,  '  Eaces  of  the  Nile  Basin,'  in  Tr.  Eth.  Soc.  vol.  v.  p.  231  ;  '  The 
All>ert  Nyanza,'  vol.  i.  p.  246.  See  Kanfmanii,  'Schihlerungen  aus  Central- 
aliika,'  p  128  ;  Bnin-Pollet,  'Le  Nil  Blanc  et  le  Soiulan,'  pj..  100,  222,  also 
p]>.  164,  200,  234  ;  G.  Lejean  in  'Kev.  des  Deux  M.'  April  1,  1862,  p.  760  ; 
AVaitz,  •  Anthropologic,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  72 — 5  ;  Bastian,  '  Mensch,'  vol.  iii.  p.  208. 
Other  recorded  cases  of  denial  of  religion  of  savage  tribes  on  narrow  definition 
or  inadequate  evidence  may  be  found  in  Meiners,  '  Gesch.  der  Eel.' vol.  i, 
pp.  11—15  (Australians  and  (alifornians) ;  Waitz,  '  Anthropologie,' vol.  L 
p.  828  (Am  Islanders,  etc.)  ;  Farrar  in  '  Anthrop.  Rev.' Aug.  1864,  p.  ccxvii 
(Kafirs,  etc.);  Martius,  '  Ethnog.  Anier.'  vol.  i.  p.  583  (Maiiaos);  J.  (3. 
Talfrey,  •  Hist,  of  Ne'v  England,'  vol.  i.  p.  46  (New  Eng    ribes). 


3ed  on 
tribes, 
ad  any 

jligions 
finition 
ief  in  a 
tition  of 
diffused 
xcluded 
jfinition 
irticular 
nderlies 
issential 
lition  of 
standard 
religion, 
ositively 
belief  in 
iiderable 
d  change 
1  so.     It 
sry  tribe 
.'overy  of 
sed    the 
1  be  the 
atural  or 
evidence 

231 ;  •  The 
lus  Central- 
lO,  222,  also 
162,  p.  760  ; 
.  iii.  p.  208. 
w  definition 
Eel.'  vol.  L 
ogie,'  vol.  L 
4,  p.  ccxviL 
iios) ;  J.   Gf 


ANIMISM. 


42: 


justifies  the  opinion  that  man,  known  to  be  capable  if  so 
vast  an  intellectual  development,  cannot  have  emerged  from 
a  non-religious  condition,  previous  to  that  religious  condi- 
tion in  which  he  happens  at  present  to  come  with  sufficient 
clearness  within  our  range  of  knowledge.  It  is  desirable, 
liowever,  to  take  our  basis  of  enquiry  in  observation  rather 
than  from  s])eculation.  Here,  so  far  as  I  can  judge  from  tlie 
immense  mass  of  accessible  evidence,  we  have  to  admit  that 
tlie  belief  in  spiritual  beings  appears  among  all  low  races 
with  whom  we  have  attained  to  thoroughly  intimate  ac- 
quaintance ;  whereas  the  assertion  of  absence  of  such  belief 
must  apply  either  to  ancient  tribes,  or  to  more  or  loss  im- 
perfectly described  modern  ones.  The  exact  bearing  of  this 
state  of  things  on  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  rehgiim  may 
be  thus  bri(  Hy  stated.  "Were  it  distinctly  proved  that  non- 
religious  savages  exist  or  have  existed,  these  might  be  at 
least  plausibly  claimed  as  representatives  of  the  condition 
of  Man  before  he  arrived  at  the  religious  stage  of  culture. 
It  is  not  desirable,  however,  that  this  argument  should  be 
put  forward,  for  the  asserted  existence  of  the  non-religious 
tribes  in  question  rests,  as  we  have  seen,  on  evidence  often 
mistaken  and  never  conclusive.  The  argument  for  the 
natural  evolution  of  religious  ideas  among  mankind  is  not 
invalidated  by  the  rejection  of  an  ally  too  weak  at  present 
to  give  effectual  help.  Non-religious  tribes  may  not  exist 
in  our  day,  but  the  fact  bears  no  more  decisively  on  the 
development  of  religion,  than  the  impossibility  of  finding  a 
modern  English  village  without  scissors  or  books  or  lucifer- 
niiitches  bears  on  the  fact  that  there  was  a  time  when  no 
such  things  existed  in  the  land. 

I  purpose  here,  under  the  name  of  Animism,  to  investigate 
the  deep-lying  doctrine  of  Spiritual  Beings,  which  embodies 
the  very  essence  of  Spiritualistic  as  oi)posed  to  Materialistic 
philosophy.  Animism  is  not  a  new  technical  term,  though 
now  seldom  used.^    From  its  special  relation  to  the  doctrine 

'  The  term  has  been  especiully  used  to  denote  the  doctrine  of  Stahl,  tlio 
pronuil<:;ator  also  of  the  jihlcgi.'-ton-theory.    The  Animism  of  Stahl  is  a  revival 


;     1 


n 

1 

i 

1 

L 

k 

I  ^ 


'fl;  i         K 


M  % 


mm 


426 


ANIMISM. 


of  the  soul,  it  will  be  seen  to  have  a  peculiar  appropriate- 
ness to  the  view  here  taken  of  the  mode  in  which  theological 
ideas  have  been  developed  among  mankind.  The  word 
Spiritualism,  though  it  may  be,  and  sometimes  is,  used  in  a 
general  sense,  has  this  obvious  defect  to  us,  that  it  has  be- 
come the  designation  of  a  particular  modern  sect,  who  indeed 
hold  extreme  spiritualistic  views,  but  cannot  be  taken  as 
typical  representatives  of  these  views  in  the  world  at  large. 
The  sense  of  Spiritualism  in  its  wider  acceptation,  the 
general  belief  in  spiritual  beings,  is  here  given  to  Animism. 
Animism  characterizes  tribes  very  low  in  the  scale  of 
humanity,  and  thence  ascends,  deeply  modified  in  its  trans- 
mission, but  from  first  to  last  preserving  an  unbroken  con- 
tinuity, into  the  midst  of  high  modern  culture.  Doctrines 
adverse  to  it,  so  largely  held  by  individuals  or  schools,  are 
usually  due  not  to  early  lowness  of  civilization,  but  to  later 
Ciianges  in  the  intellectual  course,  to  divergence  from,  or 
rejection  of,  ancestral  faiths  ;  and  such  newer  developments 
do  not  afi'eet  the  present  enquiry  as  to  the  fundamental  reli- 
gious condition  of  mankind.  Animism  is,  in  fact,  the 
groundwork  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion,  from  that  of 
savages  up  to  that  of  civilized  men.  And  although  it  may 
at  first  sight  seem  to  afford  but  a  bare  and  meagre  defini- 
tion of  a  minimum  of  religion,  it  will  be  found  practically 
sufficient ;  for  where  the  root  is,  the  branches  will  generally 
be  produced.  It  is  habitually  found  that  the  theory  of 
Animism  divides  into  two  great  dogmas,  forming  j^arts  of 
one  consistent  doctrine  ;  first,  concerning  souls  of  individual 
creatures,  capable  of  continued  existence  after  the  death  or 
destruction  of  the  body ;  second,  concerning  other  spirits, 
upward  to  the  rank  of  powerful  deities.  Spiritual  beings 
are  held  to  affect  or  control  the  events  of  the  material  world, 
and  man's  life  here  and  hereafter ;  and  it  being  considered 

and  development  in  modem  scientific  shape  of  the  classic  theory  identifying 
vital  princii)le  and  souL  See  his  'Theoria  Medica  Vera,' Halle,  1737;  and 
the  critical  dissertation  on  hia  views,  Lemoine,  '  Le  Vitalisme  et  rAniuusma 
deStahl,' Paris,  1864. 


I 


ANIMISM. 


427 


logvcul 
word 
ed  in  a 
aas  be- 
indeed 
iken  as 
t  large, 
on,  the 
nimisni. 
scale  of 
bs  trans- 
ken  con- 
)octrmes 
.cols,  are 
t  to  later 
from,  or 
>lopnients 
jntal  reli- 
fact,   the 
n  that  of 
rh  it  may 
[ti-e  defini- 
n-ac  tic  ally 
generally 
theory  of 
g  parts  of 
individual 
le  death  or 
ler  sph'its, 
.ual  beings 
erial  world, 
considered 

iory  identifying 
lie,  1737  ;  a"d 
et  I'Aniuusnie 


that  they  hold  intercourse  with  men,  and  receive  pleasure  or 
displeasure  from  human  actions,  the  belief  in  their  existence 
leads  naturally,  and  it  might  almost  be  said  inevitably,  sooner 
or  later  to  active  reverence  and  propitiation.  Thus  Animism, 
in  its  full  development,  includes  the  belief  in  souls  and  in  a 
future  state,  in  controlling  deities  and  subordin..te  spirits, 
these  doctrines  practically  resulting  in  some  kind  of  active 
worship.  One  great  element  of  religion,  that  moral  element 
which  among  the  higher  nations  forms  its  nn^st  vital  part,  is 
indeed  little  represented  in  the  religion  of  the  lower  races. 
It  is  not  that  these  races  have  no  moral  sense  or  no 
moral  standard,  for  both  are  strongly  marked  among  them, 
if  not  in  formal  precept,  at  least  in  that  traditional  con- 
sensus of  society  which  we  call  public  opinion,  according  to 
which  certain  actions  are  held  to  be  good  or  bad,  right  or 
wrong.  It  is  that  the  conjunction  of  ethics  and  Animistic 
philosophy,  so  intimate  and  powerful  in  the  higher  culture, 
seems  scarcely  yet  to  have  begun  in  the  lower.  I  propose 
here  hardly  to  touch  upon  the  purely  moral  aspects  of  reli- 
gion, but  rather  to  study  the  animism  of  the  world  so  far 
as  it  constitutes,  as  unquestionably  it  does  constitute,  an 
ancient  and  world-wide  philosophy,  of  which  belief  is  the 
theory  and  worship  is  the  practice.  Endeavouring  to  shape 
the  materials  for  an  enquiry  hitherto  strangely  undervalued 
and  neglected,  it  will  now  be  my  task  to  bring  as  clearly  as 
may  be  into  view  the  fundamental  animism  oi  the  lower 
races,  and  in  some  slight  and  broken  outline  to  trace  its 
course  into  higher  regions  of  civilization.  Here  let  me 
state  once  for  all  two  principal  conditions  under  which  the 
present  research  is  carried  on.  First,  as  to  the  religious 
doctrines  and  practices  examined,  these  are  treated  as 
belonging  to  theological  systems  devised  by  human  reason, 
without  supernatural  aid  or  revelation ;  in  other  words,  as 
being  developments  of  Natural  Religion.  Second,  as  to 
the  connexion  between  similar  ideas  and  rites  in  the  reli- 
gioi  s  of  the  savage  and  the  civilized  world.  While  dwell- 
ing at  some  length  on  doctrines  and  ceremonies  of  the  lower 


I  }ti 


%.. 


ll; 


428 


ANIMISM. 


races,  and  sometimes  particularizing  for  special  reasons  the 
related  doctrines  and  ceremonies  of  the  higher  nations,  it 
has  not  seemed  my  proper  task  to  work  out  in  detail  the 
problems  thus  suggested  among  the  philosophies  and  creeds 
of  Christendom.  Such  applications,  extending  farthest 
from  the  direct  scope  of  a  work  on  primitive  culture,  are 
briefly  stated  in  general  terms,  or  touched  in  slight  allusion, 
or  taken  for  granted  without  remark.  Educated  readers 
possess  the  information  )'equired  to  work  out  their  general 
bearing  on  theology,  while  more  technical  discussion  is  left 
to  philosophers  and  theologians  specially  occupied  with 
such  arguments. 

The  first  branch  of  the  subject  to  be  considered  is  the 
doctrine  of  human  and  other  Souls,  an  examination  of 
which  will  occupy  the  rest  of  the  present  chapter.  What 
the  di-itrine  of  the  soul  is  among  the  lower  races,  may  be 
explained  in  stating  the  present  theory  of  its  development. 
It  seems  as  though  thinking  men,  as  yet  at  a  low  level  of 
culture,  were  deeply  impressed  b_y  two  groups  of  biological 
problems.  In  the  first  place,  what  is  it  that  makes  the 
difference  between  a  living  body  and  a  dead  one ;  what 
causes  wnking,  sleep,  trance,  disease,  death  ?  In  the 
second  place,  what  are  those  human  shapes  which  appear  in 
dreams  and  visions  ?  Looking  at  these  two  groups  of  phe- 
nomena, the  ancient  savage  philosophers  probably  made 
their  first  step  by  the  obvious  inference  that  every  man  has 
two  things  belonging  to  him,  namely,  a  life  and  a  phantom. 
These  two  are  evidently  in  close  connexion  with  the  body, 
the  life  as  enabling  it  to  feel  and  think  and  act,  the  phantom 
as  being  its  image  or  second  self ;  both,  also,  are  perceived 
to  be  things  separable  from  the  body,  the  life  as  able  to  go 
away  and  leave  it  insensible  or  dead,  the  phantom  as  appear- 
ing to  people  at  a  distance  from  it.  The  second  step  would 
seem  also  easy  for  savages  to  make,  seeing  how  extremely 
difficult  civilized  men  have  found  it  to  unmake.  It  is  merely  to 
combine  the  life  and  the  phantom.  As  both  belong  to  the 
body,  why  should  they  not  also  belong  to  one  another,  and 


M 


ANIMl.SxM. 


42U 


'i\ 


iDiis  the 
tions,  it 
tail  the 
i  creeds 
farthest 
ure,  are 
ilhision, 
readers 
■  general 
)n  is  left 
led  with 

d  is  the 
ation   of 
.     ^yhat 
,  may  be 
lopiiient. 
V  level  of 
>iological 
akes  the 
e ;    what 
In    the 
api)ear  in 
)s  of  phe- 
[jly  made 
man  has 
phantom, 
the  body, 
I  phantom 
perceived 
ible  to  go 
IS  appear- 
itep  would 
extremely 
5  merely  to 
ong  to  the 
other,  and 


be  manifestations  of  one  and  the  same  soul?     Let  them 
then  be  considered  as  united,  and  the  result  is  that  well- 
known  conception  which  may  be  described  as  an  appari- 
tional-soul,   a  ghost-soul.     This,  at  any  rate,  corresponds 
with  the  actual  conception  of  th'^  personal  soul  or  spirit 
among  the  lower  races,  which  may  ve  defined  as  follows  :  It 
is  a  thin  unsubstantial  human  image,  in  its  nature  a  sort  of 
vapour,  film,  or  shadow ;  the  cause  o/  life  and  tliought  in 
the   individual  it  animates;  independently  possessiiig   the 
personal  consciousness  and  vohtion  of  its  corporeal  owner, 
past  or  present;  capable  of  leaving  the  body  far  behind,  t*') 
flash  swiftly  from  place  to  place  ;  mostly  impalpable  and  in- 
visible, yet  also  manifesting  physical  power,  and  especially 
appearing  to  men  waking  or  asleep  as  a  phantasm  separate 
from  the  body  of  which  it  bears  the  likenebs ;  continuing  to 
exist  and  a[)pear  to  men  after  the  death  of  that  body ;  able 
to  enter  into,  possess,  and  act  in  the  bodies  of  other  men, 
of  animals,  and  even  of  things.    Though  this  definition  is  by 
no  means   of  universal  application,  it  has  sufHcient  gene- 
rality to  be  taken  as  a  standard,  modified  by  more  or  less 
divergence  among  any  particular  people.     Far  from  these 
world-wide   opinions    being  arbitrary  or  conventional  pro- 
ducts, it  is  seldom  even  justifiable  to  consider  their  uni- 
formity among  distant  races  as  proving  communication  of 
any  sort.    They  are  doctrines  answering  in  the  most  forcible 
way  to  the  plain  evidence  of  men's  senses,  as  interpreted  by 
a  fairly  consistent  and  rational  primitive  philosophy.     So 
well,  indeed,  does  primitive  animism  account  for  tlie  facts 
of  nature,  that  it  has  held  its  place  into  tbe  higlier  levels  of 
education.     Though  classic  and  media3val  philosoi)hy  modi- 
fied it  much,  and  modern  philosophy  has  handled  it  yei 
more  unsparingly,  it  has  so  far  retained  the  traces  of  its 
original  character,  that  heirlooms  of  primitive  ages  may  be 
claimed  in  the  existing  psychology  of  the  civilized  world. 
Out   of  the   vast   mass   of  evidence,  collected  among  the 
most  various  and  distant  races  of  mankind,  typical  details 
may  now  be  selected  to  display  the  earlier  theory  of  the 


' 


i  It 


i 


II 


i'!^ 


430 


ANIMIS.M. 


u 


Ml 


^W 


I 'I,  , 


1  ;,'i 


soul,  the  relation  of  the  parts  of  this  theory,  and  the 
manner  in  which  these  parts  have  been  abandoned,  modi- 
fied, or  kept  up,  along  the  course  of  culture. 

To  understand  the  popular  conceptions  of  the  human 
soul  or  spirit,  it  is  instructive  to  notice  the  words  which 
have  been  found  suitable  to  express  it.  The  ghost  or 
phantasm  seen  by  the  dreamer  or  the  visionary  is  an  unsub- 
stantial form,  like  a  shadow,  and  thus  the  familiar  term  of 
the  fthnde  comes  in  to  express  the  soul.  Thus  the  Tasma- 
nian  word  for  the  shadow  is  also  that  for  the  spirit ;  ^  the 
Algonquin  Indians  describe  a  man's  soul  as  otahchuk,  **  his 
shadow  ;  "  ^  the  Quiche  language  uses  natuh  for  "  shadow, 
soul ;  "  '  the  Arawac  ueja  means  "  shadow,  soul,  image  ;  "  * 
the  Abipones  made  the  one  word  lodknl  serve  for  "shadow, 
soul,  echo,  image."  ^  The  Zulus  not  only  use  the  word 
tunzi  for  "  shadow,  spirit,  ghost,"  but  they  consider  that 
at  death  the  shadow  of  a  man  will  in  some  way  depart  from 
the  corpse,  to  become  an  ancestral  spirit.^  The  Basutos 
not  only  call  the  spirit  remaining  after  death  the  seriti  or 
"  shadow,"  but  they  think  that  if  a  man  walks  on  the  river 
bank,  a  crocodile  may  seize  his  shadow  in  the  water  and 
draw  him  in ;  " ''  while  in  Old  Calabar  there  is  found  the 
same  identification  of  the  spirit  with  the  ukpon  or 
"  shadow,"  for  a  man  to  lose  which  is  fatal.®  There  are 
thus  found  among  the  lower  races  not  only  the  types  of 
those  familiar  classic  terms,  the  skia  and  umbi-a,  but  also 
what  seems  the  fundamental  thought  of  the  stories  of 
shadowless  men  still  current  in  the  folklore  of  Europe,  and 
famiHar  to  modern  readers   in   Chamisso's  tale    of  Peter 

'  Bonwick,  'Tasmanians,'p.  182. 

^  Tanner's  '  Narr.'  ed.  by  James,  p.  291.     Also  Sprout,  p.  300  (Ahts). 

*  Brajsseur,  '  Langue  Quich^o, '  s.  y. 

*  Martins,  '  Ethnog.  Amer  '  vol.  i.  p.  796 ;  voL  ii.  p.  310. 
'  Dobrizhoffer,  '  Abipones,' vol.  ii.  p.  194. 

8  Dohne,  'Zulu  Die*  s.  v.  '  tunzi ; '  Callaway,  'ReL  of  Amazuln,'  pp.  91, 
126  ;  '  Zulu  Tales,*  vol.  L  p.  342. 

'  Casalis,  '  Basutos,' p.  245;  Arbousset  and  Daumas,  'Voyage,' p.  12. 

8  Burton,  *  W.  and  W.  fr.  W.  Afr.'  p.  389  ;  see  Koelle,  'Afr.  Native  Lit.' 
p.  324  (Kanuri).    Also  '  Joum.  Ind.  Archip.'  voL  v.  p.  713  (Australian). 


ANIMISM. 


v.n 


and   the 
?d,  modi- 

e  human 
ds  which 
ghost  or 
m  unsub- 
r  term  of 
i  Tasma- 
irit ;  ^  the 
luk,  "his 
"  shadow, 
mage  ; "  * 
"shadow, 
the  word 
sider  that 
'part  from 
3  Basutos 
e  seriti  or 
the  river 
vater  and 
"ound  the 
kpon     or 
?here  are 
types  of 
,  but  also 
itories    of 
irope,  and 
of  Peter 

Ahts). 


ulo,'  pp.  91, 

,,'p.  12. 
Native  lit.' 
tralian). 


Schlomihl.  Thus  the  dead  in  Purgatory  know  that  Dnnte 
was  aii>c  nhen  they  saw  that,  unlike  theirs,  his  figure  ciist  a 
shadow  on  the  ground.^  Other  attributes  are  taken  into 
the  notion  of  soul  or  spirit,  with  especial  regard  to  its  being 
the  cause  of  life.  Thus  the  Caribs,  connecting  the  pulses 
with  spiritual  beings,  and  especially  considering  that  in  the 
heart  dwells  man's  cliief  soul,  destined  to  a  future  heavenly 
life,  could  reasonably  use  the  one  word  louanni  for  "  soul, 
life,  heart."  ^  The  Tongans  supposed  the  soul  to  exist 
throughout  the  whole  t  ^tension  of  tlif  body,  but  particu- 
larly in  the  heart.  C'l  one  occasion,  the  natives  were 
declaring  to  a  European  that  a  man  buried  months  ago  was 
nevertheless  still  alive.  "And  one,  endeavouring  to  make 
me  understand  what  he  meant,  took  hol(^  of  my  hand,  and 
squeezing  it,  said,  '  This  will  die,  but  '.'ro  life  that  is  within 
you  will  never  die;'  with  his  o+he^  h.md  poin  ng  to  my 
heart."  ^  So  the  Basutos  say  u^  a  lead  man  that  his  heart 
is  gone  out,  and  of  one  recovering  from  sickness  that  ^r 
heart  is  coming  back.*  This  corresponds  to  the  familiar 
Old  World  view  of  the  heart  as  the  prime  mover  in  life, 
thought,  and  passion.  The  connexion  of  soul  and  blood, 
familiar  to  the  Karens  and  Papuas,  appears  prominently  in 
Jewish  and  Arabic  philosophy.^  To  educated  moderns  the 
idea  of  the  Macusi  Indians  of  Guiana  may  seem  quaint, 
that  although  the  body  w^ll  decay,  "  the  man  in  our  eyes  " 
will  not  die,  but  wander  about. ^  Yet  the  association  of 
personal  animation  w;  J;  the  pupil  of  the  eye  is  familiar  to 
European  folklore,  which  not  unreasonably  discerned  a  sign 
of  bewitchment  or  approaching  death  in  the  disappearance 
of  the  image,  pujiil,  or  baby,  from  the  dim  eyeballs  of  the 
sick  man.'' 

*  Dante,  '  Div.  Comm.  Purgatorio,' canto  iii.     Compare  Grohmann,  'Aber- 
glaube  ;.  aus  Bbhraen,'  p.  221.     See  ante,  p,  85. 

2  Rochefort,  pp.  429,  516;  J.  G.  Miiller,  p.  207. 

'  Mariner,  '  Tonga  Is.'  vol.  ii.  p.  185  ;  ti.  S.  Farmer,  *  Tonga,'  etc.  p.  131. 

♦  Casalis,  I.  c.     See  also  Mariner,  'Tonga  Is.'  etc.  p.  135. 
'  Bastian,  'Psychologie,' pp.  16 — 23. 

•  J.  H.  Bemau,  '  Brit  Guiana,   p.  134. 

'  Grimm,  '  D.  M  '  pp.  1028,  1133.     Anglo-Saxon  man-Hea. 


i 


\\ 


';■'■'! 


432 


ANIMISM. 


The  act  of  breathing,  so  characteristic  of  the  highei- 
animals  during  life,  and  coinciding  so  closely  with  life  in  its 
departure,  has  been  repeatedly  and  naturally  identified  with 
the  life  or  soul  itself.  Laura  Bridgraan  showed  in  her  in- 
structive way  the  analogy  between  the  effects  of  restricted 
sense  and  restricted  civilization,  when  one  day  she  made 
the  gesture  of  taking  something  away  from  her  mouth  :  "I 
dreamed,"  she  explained  in  words,  "that  God  took  away 
my  breath  to  heaven."  ^  It  is  thus  that  West  Australians 
used  one  word  icaug  for  **  breath,  spirit,  soul;"^  tliat  in  the 
Netela  language  of  California,  pints  means  "  life,  breath, 
soul;"^  that  certain  Greenlanders  reckoned  two  souls  to 
man,  namel}'  his  shadow  and  his  breath ;  *  that  the  Malays 
say  the  soul  of  the  dying  man  es(;apes  through  his  nostrils, 
and  in  Java  use  the  same  word  fiaica  for  "breath,  life, 
soul."*  How  the  notions  of  life,  heart,  breath,  and  phantom 
unite  in  the  one  conception  of  a  soul  or  spirit,  and  at  the 
same  time  how  loose  and  vague  such  ideas  are  among 
barbaric  races,  is  well  brought  into  view  in  the  answers  to 
a  religious  inquest  held  in  1528  among  the  natives  of 
Nicaragua.  "  When  the}'  die,  there  comes  out  of  their 
mouth  something  that  resembles  a  person,  and  is  called 
Julio  [Aztec  yull  =  to  live].  This  being  goes  to  the  place 
where  the  man  and  woman  are.  It  is  like  a  person,  but 
does  not  die,  and  the  body  remains  here."  Question.  **  Do 
those  who  go  up  on  high  keep  the  same  body,  the  same 
ftice,  and  the  same  limbs,  as  here  below  ?"  Ansiver.  "  No; 
there  is  only  the  heart."  Question.  *'  But  since  they  tear 
out  their  hearts  [i.e.,  when  a  captive  was  sacrificed] ,  what 
happens  then  ?"  An.-iicer.  "It  is  not  precisely  the  heart, 
but  that  in  them  which  makes  them  live,  and  that  quits  the 
body  when  they  die."     Or,  as  stated  in  another  interro* 

*  TiiehiT,  '  Laura  Bridj^nian,'  in  Smithsonian  Contrib.  vol.  ii.  p.  8. 

*  G.  F.  Moore,  •  Vocab.  of  W.  Australiu,'  p.  103. 

*  Briiiton,  p.  50,  see  235  ;  IJasiiau,  '  I'sychologie, '  p.  15. 
«  Craiiz,  'Gionluiid,'  p.  257. 

'  Crawfunl,  '  Malay  Or.  and  Die.  s.  v. ;  Marsden,  '  Sumatra, '  p.  386. 


ANIMISM. 


V.i'i 


,' ; 


V      > 


highei- 
fe  in  its 
led  with 
her  in- 
jstricted 
le  made 
ith:  "I 
Dk  away 
itralians 
it  in  the 
,  breath, 
souls  to 
>  Malays 
nostrils, 
ith,  life, 
phantom 
d  at  the 
!    among 
swers  to 
itives   of 
of   their 
is  called 
lie  place 
son,  but 


'II. 


(( 


Do 

le  same 

"No; 

ley  tear 

i] ,  what 

heart, 

uits  the 

interro' 


e 


gatory,  "It  is  not  their  heart  that  goes  up  above.,  but  what 
makes  them  live,  that  is  to  say,  the  breath  that  issues  from 
their  mouth  and  is  called  jalio."^  The  conception  of  the 
soul  as  breath  may  be  followed  up  through  Semitic  and 
Aryan  etymolog}',  and  thus  into  the  main  streams  of  the 
philosophy  of  the  world.  Hebrew  shows  nephesli,  "  breatli," 
passing  into  all  the  meanings  of  **  life,  soul,  mind,  animal," 
while  ruach  and  ncshaiiiah  make  the  like  transition  from 
"  breath  "  to  "  spirit ; "  and  to  these  the  Arabic  ncf.-i  and 
riih  correspond.  The  same  is  the  history  of  Sanskrit  dtiiuui 
and  ii)dna,  of  Greek  p^ydie  and  pncunia,  of  Latin  an'iDiKH, 
an'ima,  spiritus.  So  Slavonic  diich  has  developed  the  mean- 
ing of  "  breath  "  into  that  of  soul  or  spirit ;  and  the  dialects 
of  the  G3psies  have  this  word  diik  with  the  meanings  of 
**  breath,  spirit,  ghost,"  wliether  these  pariahs  brought  the 
woi'd  from  India  as  part  of  their  inheritance  of  Aryan 
speech,  or  whether  they  adopted  it  in  their  migration  across 
Slavonic  lands."  German  gcist  and  English  ghost,  too,  may 
possibly  have  the  same  original  sense  of  breath.  And  if 
any  should  think  such  expressions  due  to  mere  meta[)hor, 
they  may  judge  the  strength  of  the  implied  connexion  between 
breath  and  spirit  by  cases  of  most  unequivocal  signiilcance. 
Among  the  Seminoles  of  Florida,  when  a  wonuin  died  in 
childbirth,  the  infant  was  held  over  her  face  to  receive  her 
parting  spirit,  and  thus  acquire  strength  and  knowledge  for 
its  future  use.  These  Indians  could  have  well  understood 
why  at  the  death-bed  of  an  ancient  Eoman,  the  nearest 
kinsman  leant  over  to  inhale  the  last  breath  of  the  depart- 
ing (et  excipies  hanc  animani  ore  pio).  Their  state  of  mind 
is  kept  up  to  this  day  among  Tyrolese  peasants,  who  can 
still  fancy  a  good  man's  soul  to  issue  from  his  moulh  at 
death  like  a  little  white  cloud. ^ 


I  ( 


8. 


}86. 


'  Oviedo,  '  Hist,  du  Nicaragua,'  pp.  21-51. 

^  Pott,  'Ziyeimcr,'  vol.  ii.  p.  80{i  ;  '  ludo-Gcrm.  Wurzel-Worterbnch,*  vol.  i 
p.  1073  ;  Borrow,  '  liaveiigro, '  vol.  ii.  i;h.  xxvi.  "write  the  lil  oi'  liim  wliose 
dook  gallops  down  that  hill  every  night,"  see  vol.  iii.  ch.  if. 

*  Briiiton,  '  Myths  of  New  World,'  p.  253  ;  Comm.  iii  Virg.  jVm.  iv.  084; 
VOL.   I.  V  V 


]  y^ 


!:i 


u 


!  (    )       ]  ' 


434 


ANIMISM. 


It  will  be  shown  that  men,  in  their  composite  and  con 
fused  notions  of  the  soul,  have  brought  into  connexion  a 
list  of  manifestations  of  life  and  thought  even  more  multi- 
farious than  this.  But  also,  seeking  to  avoid  such  per- 
plexity of  combination,  the}'  have  sometimes  endeavoured 
to  define  and  classify  more  closely,  especially  by  the  theory 
that  man  has  a  combination  of  several  kinds  of  spirit,  soul, 
or  image,  to  which  different  functions  belong.  Already 
among  savage  races  such  classification  appears  in  full 
vigour.  Thus  the  Fijians  distinguish  between  a  man's 
**  dark  spirit "  or  shadow,  which  goes  to  Hades,  and  his 
**  light  spirit "  or  reflexion  in  water  or  a  mirror,  which  stays 
near  where  he  dies.'  The  Malagasy  say  that  the  saina  or 
mind  vanishes  at  death,  the  oina  or  life  becomes  mere  air, 
but  the  matoatoa  or  ghost  hovers  round  the  tomb.'*  In 
North  America,  the  duality  of  the  soul  is  a  strongly  marked 
Algonquin  belief ;  one  soul  goes  out  and  sees  dreams  while 
the  other  remains  behind  ;  at  death  one  of  the  two  abides 
with  the  body,  and  for  this  the  survivors  leave  offerings  of 
food,  while  the  other  departs  to  the  land  of  the  dead.  A 
division  into  three  souls  is  also  known,  and  the  Dakotas 
say  that  man  has  four  souls,  one  remaining  with  the  corpse, 
one  staying  in  the  village,  one  going  in  the  air,  and  one  to 
the  land  of  spirits.^  The  Karens  distinguish  between  the 
*  IeI'  or  *  kelah,'  which  may  be  defined  as  the  personal  life- 
phantom,  and  the  *  thah '  which  is  the  responsible  moral 
soul.'*  The  fourfold  division  among  the  Khonds  of  Orissa 
is  as  follows :  the  first  soul  is  that  capable  of  beatification 
or  restoration  to  Boora  the  Good  Deity ;  the  second  is 
attached  to  a  Khond  tribe  on  earth  and  is  re-bom  genera- 

Cic.  Vcrr.  v.  45;  Wuttke,  '  Volksaberglaube,' p.  210;  Rochholz,  'Dertecher 
Glaulie,'  etc.  vol.  i.  p.  111. 

»  Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  i.  p.  241. 

'  Ellis,  '  Madaj^ascar,'  vol.  i.  p.  393. 

'  Cliarlevoix,  vol.  vi.  pp.  76-8 ;  Schoolcraft,  '  Indian  Tribes,'  part  i.  pp.  33, 
83,  part  ill.  p,  229,  part  iv.  p.  70 ;  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  194  ;  J.  Q.  MUllei; 
pp.  66,  207,  8. 

*  Cross  la  '  Joum.  Amer.  Oriental  Soo.'  roL  ir.  p.  810. 


te  and  con 
connexion  a 
more  multi- 
i  such  per- 
mdeavoured 
y  the  theory 
spirit,  soul, 
I.  Ah'eady 
3ars  in  full 
en  a  man's 
:les,  and  his 
which  stays 
the  saina  or 
les  mere  air, 

tomb.'*  In 
ngly  marked 
Ireams  while 
i  two  abides 

offerings  of 
le  dead.  A 
the  Dakotas 
I  the  corpse, 
,  and  one  to 
between  the 
)ersonal  life- 
nsible  moral 
Is  of  Orissa 
beatification 
le  second  is 
bom  genera- 

lolz,  'Dex-techer 


,'  part  i.  pp.  33, 
;  J.  0.  Miillei; 


ANIMISM, 


435 


ti>m  after  generation,  so  that  at  the  birth  of  each  child  the 
priest  asks  which  member  of  the  tribe  has  returned ;  the 
third  goes  out  to  hold  spiritual  intercourse,  leaving  the 
body  in  a  languid  state,  and  it  is  this  soul  which  can  migrate 
for  a  time  into  a  tiger ;  the  fourth  dies  on  the  dissolution 
of  the  body.i  Such  classifications  resemble  those  of  higher 
races,  as  for  instance  the  three-fold  division  of  shade,  manes, 
and  spirit : 

"  Big  duo  sunt  homini,  manes,  caro,  spiritus,  umbra 
Quatuor  base  loci  bis  duo  suscipiuiit. 
Terra  tegit  carnem,  tumulum  circumvolat  umbra, 
Manes  Orcus  habet,  spiritus  astra  petit." 

Not  attempting  to  follow  up  the  details  of  such  psychical 
division  into  the  elaborate  systems  of  Hterary  nations,  I 
shall  not  discuss  the  distinction  which  the  ancient  Egyptians 
seem  to  have  made  in  the  Ritual  of  the  Dead  betw^een  the 
man's  ha,  akh,  ka,  khaba,  translated  by  Mr.   Birch   as  his 
"soul,"  ''  mind,"  "  existence,"  "  shade,"  or  the  Ilabbiuical 
division  into  what  may  be  roughly  described  as  tlie  bodily, 
spiritual,  and  celestial  souls,  or  the  distinction  between  the 
emanative  and  genetic  souls  in  Hindu  philosophy,  or  the 
distribution  of  life,  apparition,  ancestral  spirit,  among  the 
three  souls  of  the  Chinese,  or  the  demarcations  of  the  nous, 
pi^yche,  and  pneuma,  or  of  the  aniina  and  ammus,  or  the 
famous  classic  and  mediceval  theories  of  the  vegetal,  sensi- 
tive, and  rational  souls.     Suffice  it  to  point  out  here  that 
such  speculation  dates  back  to  the  savage  condition  of  our 
race,  in  a  state  fairly  comparing  as  to  scientific  value  with 
much  that  has  gained  esteem  within  the  precincts  of  ]iigher 
culture.     It  would  be  a  difficult  task  to  treat  such  classifi- 
cation  on  a  consistent  logical  basis.     Terms  corresponding 
with  those  of  life,  mind,  soul,  spirit,  ghost,  and  so  forth, 
are  not  thought  of  as  describing  really  separate  entities,  so 
much  as  the  several  forms  and  functions  of  one  individual 

>  Macpheraaii,  pp.  CI,  2.     See  also  Klemta.  'C.  G.'  vol.  iii.  p.  71  (Lappy 
St.  Johu,  '  far  East,'  vol.  i.  p.  189  ;Dayaks). 

V  V  2 


(i1 


% 


I  .  i 


w\ 


I    I 


43G 


A.N1MISM. 


being.  Tlu\s  the  contusion  which  here  prevails  in  our  own 
thon-f^ht  and  language,  in  a  manner  typical  of  the  thought 
and  language  of  mankind  in  general,  is  in  fact  due  not 
merely  to  vagueness  of  terms,  but  to  an  ancient  theory  of 
substantial  unity  which  underlies  them.  Such  ambiguity  of 
language,  however,  will  be  found  to  interfere  little  with  the 
present  enquiry,  for  the  details  given  of  the  nature  and 
action  of  spirits,  souls,  phantoms,  will  themselves  define  the 
exact  sense  such  words  are  to  be  taken  in. 

The  early  animistic  theory  of  vitality,  regarding  the  func- 
tions of  life  as  caused  b}'  the  soul,  offers  to  the  saviige  mind 
an  explanation  of  several  bodily  and  mental  conditions,  as 
being  effects  of  a  departure  i  the  soul  or  some  of  its  con- 
stituent spirits.  Tins  theory  holds  a  wide  and  strong 
position  in  savage  biology.  The  South  Australians  express 
it  when  the}"^  sa}'  of  one  insensible  or  unconscious,  that  he 
is  "  wilyamarraba,"  i.  e.,  "  without  soul."^  Among  the 
Algonquin  Indians  of  North  America,  we  hear  of  sickness 
being  accounted  for  by  the  i^atient's  **  shadow  "  being  un- 
settled or  detached  from  his  body,  and  of  the  convalescent 
being  reproached  for  exposing  himself  before  his  shadow 
was  safely  settled  down  in  him ;  where  we  should  say  that 
a  man  was  ill  and  recovered,  they  would  consider  that  he 
died,  but  came  again.  Another  account  from  among  the 
same  race  explains  the  condition  of  men  lying  in  le- 
thargy or  trance  ;  their  souls  have  travelled  to  the  banks 
of  the  River  of  Death,  but  have  been  driven  back  and  re- 
turn to  re-animate  their  bodies.*  Among  the  Fijians, 
"  when  any  one  faints  or  dies,  their  spirit,  it  is  said,  may 
sometimes  be  brought  back  by  calling  after  it ;  and  occa- 
sionally the  ludicrous  scene  is  witnessed  of  a  stout  man 
lying  at  full  length,  and  bawling  out  lustily  for  the  return  of 
his  own  soul."  ^     To  the  negroes  of  North  Guinea,  derange- 

'  ShUrniann,  '  '^''ocab.  of  Parnkalla  Lang.'  s.  v. 

•  Tanner's  •Narr.*  p.  291 ;  Keating,  'Narr.  of  Long's  Exp.'voL  ii.  p.  154. 
'  Williiims,  '  Fiji,'  voL  i  p.  242  ;  see  the  converse  process  of  catching  awaj 
a  man's  soul,  causing  him  to  pine  and  die,  p.  25Q. 


•    Ml 


s  in  our  own 
the  thought 
act  due  not 
3nt  theory  of 
ambiguity  of 
tie  with  the 
nature  and 
es  define  the 

ng  the  fune- 
savage  mind 
auditions,  as 
e  of  its  con- 

and  strong 
ians  express 
ous,  that  he 

Among  the 
'  of  sickness 
"  being  un- 
convalescent 

his  shiulovv 
luld  say  that 
ider  that  he 
L  among  the 
lying  in  le- 
o  the  banks 
back  and  re- 
the  Fijians, 
is  said,  may 
;  and  occa- 
a  stout  man 
the  return  of 
lea,  derange- 


).' vol.  ii.  p.  154. 
Df  catching  away 


■ 


ANIMISM. 


437 


ment  or  dotage  is  caused  by  the  patient  being  prematurely 

drtv^P     T^        ""'''  '■"'''  '"'^^^  ^  '"^^'^  *^"^^^°^-'>'  -^'- 
cirawal.       Thus,  m  various  countries,  the  bringing  back  of 

lost  souls  becomes  a  regular  part  of  the  sorcerer's  or  priest's 
profession.     The  Salish  Indians  of  Oregon  regard  tlie  spirit 
as  distuict  from  the  vital  principle,  and  capable  of  quitting 
the  body  for  a  short  time  without  the  patient  bein-  con! 
8C10US  of  its  absence ;    but  to  avoid  fatal  consequences  it 
must  be  restored  as  soon  as  possible,  and  accordin-lv  the 
medicme-man  in  solemn  form  replaces  it  down  throu<di  the 
patient's  head.^     The  Turanian  or  Tatar  races  of  Northern 
Asia  strongly  hold  the   tlieory  of  tlie  soul's   departure  in 
disease,  and  among  the  Buddhist  tribes  the  Lamas  carry 
out   the    ceremony  of  soul-restoration   in   most   elaborate 
lorm.     When  a  man  has  been  robbed  bv  a  demon  of  his 
rational  soul,  and  has  only  his  animal  soul  left,  his  senses 
and  memory  grow  weak  and  he  falls  into  a  dismal  state. 
Ihen  the  Lama  undertakes  to  cure  him,  and  with  ,iuaint 
rites  exorcises  the  evil  demon.    But  if  tliis  fails,  tlien  it  is  the 
patient's  soul  itself  tliat  cannot  or  will  not  find  its  way  back 
bo  the  sick  man  is  laid  out  in  his  best  attire  and  surrounded 
with  his  most  attractive  possessions,  tlie  friends  and  rela- 
tives go  thrice  round  the  dwelling,  affectionately  calliu-  back 
the  soul  by  name,  while  as  a  further  inducement  tlie>.ama 
reads  from  his  book  descriptions  of  the  pains  of  hell,  and 
the  dangers  mcurred  by  a  soul  which  wilfullv  abandons  its 
body,  and  then  at  last  the  whole  assembly  declare  with  one 
voice  that  the  wandering  spirit  has  returned  and  the  patient 
will  recover.3     The  Karens  of  Birma  will  run  about  pre- 
tending  to  catch  a  sick  man's  wandering  soul,  or  as  they 
say  with  the  ancient   Greeks,  his    "  butterfiy  "  (lnp-p,/a), 
and  at  last  drop  it  down  upon  his  head.     I'he  Karen  doc- 
trine of  the    "  la  "  is  indeed  a  perfect  and  well-marked 

»  J.  L.  Wilson,  '  W.  Afr.'  p.  220. 

«  Bastian,  'Mensch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  819  ;  also  Sproat,  p.  213  (Vancouve.'s  I.). 
Jiastian,  '  Psychologie, '  p.  34.     Gmelin,  •  Reisen  diirch   Sibirien,' vol  il 
•p.  359  (Yakuts) ;  Haveiisteiii,  « Amur,'  p.  351  \Tuiiguz). 


'tl 


)ii 


.'  ll 


138 


ANIMISM. 


I'  f: 


\n. 


vitalistic  system.  This  la,  soul,  ghost,  or  genius,  may  be 
separated  from  the  body  it  belongs  to,  and  it  is  a  matter  of 
the  deepest  interest  to  the  Karen  to  keep  his  la  with  him, 
by  calling  it,  making  offerings  of  food  to  it,  and  so  forth. 
It  is  especially  when  the  bod}'  is  asleep,  that  the  soul  goes 
out  and  wanders ;  if  it  is  detained  beyond  a  certain  time, 
disease  ensues,  and  if  permanently,  then  its  owner  dies. 
When  the  "  wee  "  or  spirit-doctor  is  emplo3'eil  to  call  back 
tlie  d'parted  shade  or  life  of  a  Karen,  if  he  cannot  recover 
it  from  the  region  of  the  dead,  he  will  sometimes  take  the 
shade  of  a  living  man  and  transfer  it  to  the  dead,  while  its 
proper  own«r,  whose  soul  has  ventured  out  in  a  dream, 
sickens  and  dies.  Or  when  a  Karen  becomes  sick,  languid 
and  pining  from  his  la  having  left  him,  his  friends  will  per- 
form a  ceremony  with  a  garment  of  the  invalid's  and  a  fowl 
which  is  cooked  and  offered  with  rice,  invoking  the  spirit 
with  formal  prayers  to  come  back  to  the  patient.^  This  cere- 
mony is  perhaps  ethnologically  connected,  thcugh  it  is  not 
easy  to  say  by  what  manner  of  diffusion  or  Avhen,  with  a 
rite  still  practised  in  China.  "When  a  Chinese  is  at  the 
point  of  death,  and  his  soul  is  supposed  to  be  already  out 
of  his  body,  a  relative  may  be  seen  holding  up  the  patient's 
coat  on  a  long  bamboo,  to  which  a  white  cock  is  often  fast- 
ened, while  a  Tauist  priest  by  incantations  brings  the 
departed  spii  i  into  the  coat,  in  order  to  put  it  back  into 
the  sick  man.  If  the  bamboo  after  a  time  turns  round 
slowly  in  the  holder's  hands,  this  shows  that  the  spirit  is 
inside  the  garment.^ 

Such  temporary  exit  of  the  soul  has  a  world-wide  appli- 
cation to  the  proceedings  of  the  sorcerer,  priest,  or  seer 
himself.  He  professes  to  send  forth  his  spirit  on  distant 
journeys,  and  probably  often  believes  his  soul  released  for  a 


•  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  L  p.  143 ;  vol  ii.  pp.  388,  418 ;  voL  iU. 
p.  236.  Mason,  'Karens,'  1.  c.  p.  196,  etc.;  Cross,  'Karens,'  in'Juiirn. 
Amer.  Oriental  Soc'  vol.  iv.  1854,  p.  307.  See  also  St.  John,  'Far  Kast,'  l.a 
(Dayako). 

"  Doolittle,  '  Chineae,'  vol.  i.  p.  160. 


ANIMISM. 


43i) 


IS,  may  be 
V  matter  of 
b  with  him, 
\  so  forth. 
e  soul  goes 
rtain  time, 
)wner  dies. 
;o  call  back 
not  recover 
les  take  the 
,cl,  while  its 
n  a  dream, 
lick,  languid 
ids  will  per- 
s  and  a  fowl 
ig  the  spirit 
This  cere- 
Lgh  it  is  not 
vhen,  with  a 
!se  is  at  the 
already  out 
the  patient's 
|s  often  fast- 
brings   the 
it  back  into 
turns  round 
the  spirit  is 

l-wide  appli- 

[•iest,  or  seer 

Kt  on  distant 

released  for  a 

£8,  418  ;  vol.  iiL 
Irens,'  in '  Journ. 
L  'Far  Kastj'LOi 


time  from  its  bodily  prison,  as  in  the  case  of  that  remark- 
able dreamer  and  visionary  Jerome  Cardan,  wlio  dusciibes 
himself  as  having  the  faculty  of  passing  out  of  his  senses  as 
into  ecstasy  whenever  he  will,  feeling  when  he  goes  into 
this  state  a  sort  of  separation  near  the  heart  as  if  his  soul 
were  departing,  this  state  beginning  from  his  brain  and 
passing  down  his  spine,  and  he  then  feeling  only  that  he  is 
out  of  himself.^  Thus  the  Australian  native  doctor  is  al- 
leged to  obtain  his  initiation  b}-  visiting  the  world  of  spirits 
in  a,  trance  of  two  or  three  days'  duration  ;-  the  Khond  priest 
authenticates  his  claim  to  oliice  by  remaining  from  one  to 
i'ourtoen  days  in  a  languid  and  dreamy  state,  caused  by  one  of 
his  souls  being  away  in  the  divine  presence  ;'*  the  Gieenlaud 
angekok's  soul  goes  forth  from  his  body  to  fetch  his  familiar 
demon;*  the  Turanian  shamau  lies  in  lethargy  while  his 
soul  departs  to  bring  hidden  wisdom  from  the  land  of 
spirits."  The  literature  of  more  progressive  races  su[)plies 
similar  accounts.  A  characteristic  story  from  old  Scandi- 
navia is  that  of  the  Norse  chief  Ingliauud,  who  shut  up 
three  Finns  in  a  hut  for  three  nights,  that  they  might  visit 
Iceland  and  inform  him  of  the  lie  of  the  country  where  he 
was  to  settle  ;  their  bodies  became  rigid,  they  sent  their 
souls  on  the  errand,  and  awakening  after  the  three  days  they 
gave  a  description  of  the  Vatnsdiel.^  The  typical  classic 
case  is  the  story  of  Hermotimos,  whose  prophetic  soul  went 
out  from  time  to  time  to  visit  distant  regions,  till  at  last  his 
wife  burnt  the  lifeless  body  on  the  funeral  pile,  and  when 
the  poor  soul  came  back,  there  was  no  longer  a  dwelling  for 
it  to  animate.'''  A  group  of  the  legendary  visits  to  the 
spirit-world,  which  will  be  described  in  the  next  chapter, 

'  Cardan,  '  De  Varietate  Rerum,'  Basel,  1556,  cap.  xliii. 

«  Staiibri.lge,  '  Abor.  of  Victoria,'  in  'Tr.  Etli.  Soc'  vol.  i.  p.  300. 

•  Macpherson,  'India,'  p.  103. 

•  Crauz,  'Gronland,'  p.  269.     See  also  Sproat,  1.  c. 

»  Ruhs,    •  Finland,'  p.   303;    Gastrin,   'Finn.    Myth,'   p.   134;    Bastian, 
Menscb,'  vol.  ii   p.  .SI  9. 

•  Vatnsdaila  Saga  ;  Baring-Gould,  'Werewolves,'  p.  29. 
'  Pliii.  vii.  53  ;  Luciaii.  Hennotiiuus,  Muse,  jiucoiu.  7. 


( 


i    i 


■1:1 


Ii 


1/'  i. 


II      ' 


I;-:'; 


i';j    K, 


■I  ■    ' 


p  I 


ANIMISM. 


belong  to  this  class.  A  typical  spiritualistic  instance  may 
be  quoted  from  Jung- Stilling,  who  says  that  examples  have 
come  to  his  knowledge  of  sick  persons  who,  longing  to  see 
absent  friends,  have  fallen  into  a  swoon  during  which  they 
have  appeared  to  the  distant  objects  of  their  aifection.^  As 
an  illustration  from  our  own  folklore,  the  well-known  super- 
stition may  serve,  that  fasting  watcliers  on  St.  John's  Eve 
may  se:  the  apparitions  of  those  doomed  to  die  during  the 
year  come  with  the  clergyman  to  the  church  door  and  knock ; 
these  apparitions  are  spirits  who  come  forth  from  their 
bodies,  for  the  minister  has  been  noticed  to  be  much  troubled 
in  his  sleep  while  his  phantom  was  thus  engaged,  and  when 
one  of  a  party  of  watchers  fell  into  a  sound  sleep  and  could 
not  be  roused,  the  others  saw  his  apparition  knock  at  the 
church  door.^  Modern  Europe  has  indeed  kept  closely 
-enough  to  the  lines  of  early  philosophy,  for  such  ideas  to 
have  little  strangeness  to  our  own  time.  Language  pre- 
serves record  of  them  in  such  expressions  as  "  out  of  one- 
self," "  beside  oneself,"  "  in  an  ecstasy,"  and  he  who  says 
that  his  spirit  goes  forth  to  meet  a  friend,  can  still  realize 
in  the  phrase  a  meaning  deeper  than  metaphor. 

This  same  doctrine  forms  one  side  of  the  theory  of  dreams 
prevalent  among  the  lower  races.  Certain  of  tlie  Green- 
landers,  Cranz  remarks,  consider  that  the  soul  quits  the 
body  in  the  night  and  goes  out  hunting,  dancing,  and  visit- 
ing ;  their  dreams,  which  are  frequent  and  lively,  having 
brought  tliem  to  this  opinion.^  Among  the  Indians  of 
Norili  America,  we  hear  of  the  dreamer's  soul  leaving  hia 
body  and  wandering  in  quest  of  things  attractive  to  it. 
These  things  the  waking  man  must  endeavour  to  obtain, 
lest  his  soul  be  troubled,  and  quit  the  body  altogether.* 


>  R.  D.  Owen,  '  Footfalls  on  the  Boundary  of  another  World,'  p.  269.  Sm 
A.  R.  Wallace,  'Scientific  Aspect  of  the  Supernatural,'  p.  43. 

2  Brand,  'Pop.  Ant.'  vol.  i.  p.  331,  vol.  iiu  p.  236.  See  Calmet,  'Diss. 
«ur  les  Esprits  ; '  Maury,  *  Magie,'  part  it  ch.  iv. 

»  Cranz,  '  Griinland,'  p.  257. 

*  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  196. 


ANIMISAI. 


441 


mce  may 
pies  have 
tng  to  see 
hich  they 
tion.^    As 
fwn  super- 
ohn's  Eve 
luring  the 
intl  knock; 
from   their 
;h  troubled 
,  and  when 
)  and  could 
lock  at  the 
:ept  closely 
ch  ideas  to 
iguage  pre- 
out  of  one- 
he  who  says 
still  realize 

ry  of  dreams 
the  Green- 
al  quits  the 
cT,  and  visit- 
vely,  having 
Indians  of 
leaving  his 
active  to  it. 
iir  to  obtain, 
altogether.* 

rid,'  p.  259.    See 
e  Calmet,  'Diss. 


The  New  Zealanders  considered  the  dreaming  soul  to  \>  uve 
the  body  and  return,  even  travelling  to  the  region  of  lie 
lead  to  bold  convert :;  witli  its  friends.^  The  Tiig.ds  of 
Luzon  object  to  waking  a  sleeper,  on  accoimt  of  the  absence 
af  his  soul.^  The  Karens,  whose  theory  of  the  wandering 
Boul  has  just  been  noticed,  explain  dreams  to  be  what  tliis 
la  sees  and  experiences  in  its  journeys  when  it  has  left  the 
body  asleep.  Tliey  even  account  with  much  acuteness  for 
the  fact  that  we  are  apt  to  dream  of  peo])le  and  [)bices 
which  we  knew  before ;  the  leii)-pya,  they  say,  can  only 
visit  the  regions  where  the  body  it  belongs  to  lias  been  al- 
ready.^ Onward  from  the  savage  state,  tbe  idea  of  the 
spirit's  departure  in  sleep  may  be  traced  into  the  si)ecu- 
lative  philosophy'  of  higher  nations,  as  in  the  Vedaiita 
system,  and  the  Kabbala.*  St.  Augustine  tells  one  of  the 
double  narratives  which  so  well  illustrate  theories  of  this 
kind.  The  man  who  tells  Augustine  the  story  relates  that, 
at  home  one  night  before  going  to  sleep,  he  saw  coming  to 
him  a  certain  philosopher,  most  well  known  to  biin,  who 
then  expounded  to  him  certain  Platonic  passages,  which 
when  asked  previously  he  had  refused  to  explain.  And 
when  he  (afterwards)  enquired  of  this  philosopher  why  lie 
did  at  his  house  what  he  had  refused  to  do  when  asked  at 
his  own:  "  I  did  not  do  it,"  said  the  philosopher,  "  but  I 
dreamt  I  did."  And  thus,  says  Augustine,  that  was  ex- 
hibited to  one  by  phantastic  image  while  waking,  which  the 
other  saw  in  dream."  European  folklore,  too,  has  preserved 
interesting  details  of  this  primitive  dream-theory,  such  as 
the  fear  of  turning  a  sleeper  over  lest  the  absent  soul  should 

'  Taylor,  'New Zealand,' pp.  104, 184,  333  ;  Baker  in  *Tr.  Eth.  Soc' vol.  L 
p.  57. 

"  Bastian,  •  Mensch/  vol.  ii.  p.  319  ;  Jagor  in  Journ.  Eth.  Soo.  vol.  ii 
p.  175. 

•  Mason,  'Karens,'  1.  c.  p.  199;  Cross,  1.  c.  ;  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asien,' 
Tol.  i.  p.  144,  vol.  ii.  p.  389,  vol.  iii.  p.  266. 

*  Bastian,  '  Psychologie,'  pp.  16-20  ;  Eisenmenger,  7oL  L  p.  458,  vol.  iL 
pp.  13,  20,  453  ;  Frnnok,  •Kabl)ale,'  p.  235. 

'  Augustin.  De  Civ.  Dei,  zviii.  18. 


'"  4fi 


442 


ANIMISM. 


if 


,<    > 


r*  < 


f  i 


!l     ' 


miss  the  wa}'  back.  King  Guiitlirara's  legend  is  one  of  a 
group  interesting  from  the  same  point  of  view.  The  king 
lay  in  the  wood  asleep  with  his  head  in  his  faithful  hench- 
man's lap ;  the  servant  saw  as  it  were  a  snake  issue  from 
his  lord's  mouth  and  run  to  the  brook,  but  it  could  not 
pass,  so  the  servant  laid  his  sword  across  the  water,  and  the 
creature  ran  along  it  and  up  into  a  mountain  ;  after  a  while 
it  came  back  and  returned  into  the  mouth  of  the  sleeping 
king,  who  waking  told  him  how  he  had  dreamt  that  he  went 
over  an  iron  bridge  into  a  mountain  full  of  gold.^  This  is 
one  of  those  instructive  legends  which  preserve  for  us,  as  in 
a  museum,  relics  of  an  early  intellectual  condition  of  our 
Aryan  race,  in  thoughts  which  to  our  modern  minds  have 
fallen  to  the  level  of  quaint  fancy,  but  which  still  remain 
sound  and  reasonable  philosophy  to  the  savage.  A  Karen 
at  this  day  would  appreciate  every  point  of  the  story ;  the 
familiar  notion  of  spirits  not  crossing  water,  Avhich  he  ex- 
emplifies in  his  Burmese  forests  by  stretching  threads 
across  the  brook  for  the  ghosts  to  pass  along ;  the  idea  of 
the  soul  going  forth  embodied  in  an  animal ;  and  the  theory 
of  the  dream  being  a  real  journey  of  the  sleeper's  soul. 
Finally,  this  old  belief  still  finds,  as  such  beliefs  so  often 
do,  a  refuge  in  modern  poetry  : 


**  Ton  ciild  is  dreaming  far  away, 
And  is  not  where  he  seems." 


This  opinion,  however,  only  constitutes  one  of  several 
parts  of  the  theory  of  dreams  in  savage  psychology.  An- 
other part  has  also  a  place  here,  the  view  that  human  souls 
come  from  without  to  visit  the  sleeper,  who  sees  them  as 
dreams.  These  two  views  are  by  no  means  incompatible. 
The  North  American  Indians  allowed  themselves  the  alterna- 
tive of  supposing  a  dreaiii  to  be  either  a  visit  from  the  soul 
of  the  person  or  object  dreamt  of,  or  a  sight  seen  by  the 
rational  soul,  gone  out  for  an  excursion   while   the  sensi* 


»  Grimm.  '  D.  M.'  p.  103a. 


one  of  a 
riie  king 
I  liencli- 
sue  from 
ould  not 
r,  and  the 
;r  a  while 

sleeping 
X  he  went 
This  is 
•  us,  as  in 
on  of  our 
intls  have 
ill  remain 

A  Karen 
story;  the 
Lch  he  ex- 
,g  threads 
,he  idea  of 

le  theory 

ler's  soul. 

's  so  often 


of  several 
logy.  An- 
uman  souls 
es  them  as 
compatihle. 
the  alterna- 
om  the  soul 

een  by  the 
the  sensi- 


.INIMISM. 


143 


tive  soul  remains  in  the  body.^  So  the  Zulu  maybe  visited 
in  a  dream  by  the  shade  of  an  ancestor,  the  itongo,  who 
comes  to  warn  him  of  danger,  or  he  may  himself  be  taken 
by  the  itongo  in  a  dream  to  visit  his  distant  people,  and  see 
that  they  are  in  trouble  ;  as  for  the  man  who  is  passing  into 
the  morbid  condition  of  the  professional  seer,  phantoms  are 
continually  coming  to  talk  to  him  in  his  sleep,  till  he  becomes, 
as  the  expressive  native  phrase  is,  "a  house  of  dreams."^ 
In  the  lower  range  of  culture,  it  is  perhaps  most  frequently 
taken  for  granted  that  a  man's  apparition  in  a  dream  is  a 
visit  from  his  disembodied  spirit,  which  the  dreamer,  to  use 
an  expressive  Ojibwa  idiom,  '*  sees  when  asleep."  Such  a 
thought  comes  out  clearly  in  the  Fijian  opinion  that  a  living 
man's  spirit  may  leave  the  body,  to  trouble  other  people  in 
their  sleep  ;  ^  or  in  a  recent  account  of  an  old  Indian  woman 
of  British  Columbia  sending  for  the  medicine-man  to  drive 
away  the  dead  people  who  came  to  her  every  night."*  A 
modern  observer's  description  of  the  state  of  mind  of  the 
negroes  of  South  Guinea  in  this  respect  is  extremely  charac- 
teristic and  instructive.  "  All  their  dreams  are  construed 
into  visits  from  the  spirits  of  their  deceased  friends.  The 
cautions,  hints,  and  warnings  which  come  to  them  through 
this  source,  are  received  with  the  most  serious  and  deferential 
attention,  and  are  always  acted  upon  in  their  waking  hours. 
The  habit  of  relating  their  dreams,  which  is  universal, 
greatly  promotes  the  habit  of  dreaming  itself,  and  hence 
then*  sleeping  hours  are  characterized  by  almost  as  much 
intercourse  with  the  dead  as  their  waking  are  with  the 
living.  This  is,  no  doubt,  one  of  the  reasons  of  their  exces- 
sive superstitiousness.  Their  imaginations  become  so  lively 
that  they  can  scarcely  distinguish  between  their  dreams  and 
their  waking  thoughts,  between  the  real  and  the  ideal,  and 

'  Charlevoix,  '  Nouvelle  France,'  vol.  vi.  p.  78  ;  Loskiel,  part  L  p.  76  ; 
Sproat,  •  Savage  Lite,'  p.  172. 

8  Callaway,  ■  Keli<<.  of  Aiiiaziilu,'  pp.  228,  260,  316;  'Joiini.  Anthrop. 
lust.'  vol.  i.  p.  170.     See  also  St.  John,  '  Far  Ea>,t,'  vol.  i.  p.  199  (Dayaks). 

»  Wiiliaiiis,  '  Fiji,'  vol.  i.  p.  24  J. 

*  Mayne,  '  Brit.  Columbia,'  p.  261  ;  see  Sproat  L  a 


I    i 


iU 


ANIMIS.\ 


they  consequently  utter  falsehood  witliou*^  intending,  and 
profess  to  see  thincfs  which  never  existed."^ 

To  the  Greek  of  old,  the  dream-soul  was  what  to  the 
modern  savage  it  still  is.  Sleep,  loos-ing  cares  of  mind,  fell 
on  Achilles  as  he  lay  by  the  soiniding  sesi,  and  there  stood 
over  him  the  soul  of  Patrohlos,  like  to  him  altogether  in 
stature,  and  the  beauteous  eyes,  and  the  voice,  and  the  gar- 
ments that  wrapped  his  skin;  he  spake,  and  Achilles 
stretched  out  to  grasp  him  with  loving  hands,  but  caught 
him  not,  and  like  a  smoke  the  soul  sped  twittering  below 
the  earth.  Along  the  ages  that  separate  us  from  Homeric 
times,  the  apparition  in  dreams  of  men  living  or  dead  has 
been  a  subject  of  philosophic  speculation  and  of  superstitious 
fear.'  Both  the  phantom  of  the  living  and  the  ghost  of 
the  dead  figure  in  Cicero's  typical  tale.  Two  Arcadians 
came  to  Megara  together,  one  lodged  at  a  friend's  house,  the 
other  at  an  inn.  In  the  night  this  latter  appeared  to  his 
fellow-traveller,  imploring  his  help,  for  the  innkeeper  was 
plotting  his  death  ;  the  sleeper  sprang  up  in  alarm,  but 
thinking  the  vision  of  no  consequence  went  to  sleep  again. 
Then  a  second  time  his  companion  appeared  to  him,  to 
entreat  that  though  he  had  I'ailed  to  help,  he  would  at  least 
avenge,  for  the  innkeei^er  had  killed  him  and  hidden  his 
body  in  a  dung-cart,  wherefore  he  charged  his  fellow- 
traveller  to  be  early  next  morning  at  the  city-gate  before 
the  cart  passed  out.  Struck  with  tliis  second  dream,  the 
traveller  went  as  bidden,  and  there  found  the  cart ;  the  body 
of  the  murdered  man  was  in  it,  and  the  innkeeper  was 
brought  to  justice.  "  Quid  hoc  somnio  dici  potest 
divinius  ? " '  Augustine  discusses  with  reference  to  the 
nature  of  the  soul  various  dream-stories  of  his  time,  where 
the  api)aritions  of  men  dead  or  living  are  seen  in  dreams. 

'  J.  L.  "Wilson,  'W.  Africa,'  p.  395,  see  210.  See  also  Ellis,  '  Polyn.  Ees." 
vol.  i.  p.  396  ;  J.  G.  MUlk-r,  *Amer.  Uriel.'  p.  287  ;  Buchanan,  'Mysore,'  in 
Pinkorton,  vol.  viii.  p.  677;  'Early  Hist,  of  Miuikind,'  p.  8. 

2  Homer.  II.  xxiii.  59.  See  also  Odyss.  xi.  207,  222  ;  Porphyr.  De  Antra 
Nynipliarum  ;  Virgil.  iEn.  ii.  794 ;  Ovid.  Fast  v.  476. 

•  Cicero  De  Diviiiatione,  i.  27. 


nding,  find 

hat  to  tlie 
:  mind,  fell 
there  stood 
together  in 
nd  the  f^iir- 
id  Achilles 

but  caught 
jring  below 
m  Homeric 
or  dead  has 
iiperstitious 
le  ghost  of 
>  Arcadians 
s  house,  the 
eared  to  his 
ikeeper  was 

alarm,  but 
sleep  again. 

to  him,  to 
3uld  at  least 
I  hidden  his 

his  fellow- 
-gate  before 

dream,  the 
rt ;  the  body 
akeeper  was 
dici  potest 
ence   to  the 

time,  where 
1  in  dreams. 

is,  '  Polyn.  Kes.' 
an,  '  Mysore,'  in 

rphyr.  De  Antra 


ANIMISM. 


445 


In  one  of  the  latter  he  himself  figured,  for  when  a  discii-le 
of  his,  Eulogius  the  rhetor  of  Carthage,  once  could  not  get 
to  sleep  for  thinking  of  an  obscure  passage  in  Cicero's 
Rhetoric,  that  night  Augustine  came  to  him  in  a  dream  ami 
exphiined  it.  But  Augustine's  tendency  was  toward  the 
modern  theory  of  dreams,  and  in  this  case  he  says  it  was 
certainly  his  im;igc  that  up[)eared,  not  himself,  who  was  far 
across  the  sea,  neither  knowiugnor  caring  about  the  matter.^ 
As  we  survey  the  immense  series  of  dream-stories  of  siiuiliir 
types  in  patristic,  medieval,  and  modern  literature,  we  mny 
find  it  dilFicult  enough  to  decide  which  are  truth  and  wliich 
are  fiction.  But  along  the  course  of  these  myriad  narra- 
tives of  human  phantoms  appearing  in  dreams  to  clieur  or 
torment,  to  warn  or  inform,  or  to  demand  fulfihnent  of  their 
own  desires,  the  problem  of  dream-apparitiuns  may  be  traced 
in  progress  of  gradual  determination,  from  the  earlier  con- 
viction that  a  disembodied  soul  really  comes  into  the  presence 
of  the  sleeper,  toward  the  later  opinion  that  sucii  a  phantasm 
is  produced  in  the  dreamer's  mind  without  the  perception  of 
any  external  objective  figure. 

The  evidence  of  visions  corresponds  with  the  evidence  of 
dreams  in  their  bearing  on  primitive  theories  of  the  soul,^ 
and  the  two  classes  of  phenomena  substantiate  and  supple- 
ment one  another.  Even  in  healthy  waking  life,  the  sava'^e 
or  barbarian  has  never  learnt  to  make  that  rigid  distinction 
between  subjective  and  objective,  between  imagination  and 
reality,  to  enforce  which  is  one  of  the  main  results  of 
scientific  education.  Still  less,  when  disordered  in  body  and 
mind  he  sees  around  him  phantom  luunan  forms,  can  he  dis- 
trust the  evidence  of  his  very  senses.  Thus  it  comes  to 
pass  that  throughout  the  lower  civilization  men  believe,  with 
the  most  vivid  and  intense  belief,  in  the  objective  reality  of 
the  human  spectres  which  they  see  in  sickness,  exhaustion,  or 
excitement.  As  will  be  hereafter  noticed,  one  nuiin  reason 
of  the  practices  of  fasting,  penance,  narcotising  by  drugs,  and 

*  Augustin.  De  Cura  pro  Mortals,  x.-xii.  Epist.  clviii. 

'  Compare  Voltaire's  remarks,  'Diet.  Phil.' art.  "ame,"etc. 


»■ 
I 


446 


ANIMISM. 


•    I 


In  ' 


\i 


im 


other  means  of  bringing  on  morbid  exaltation,  is  that  the 
patients  may  obtain  the  sight  of  spectral  beings,  from  whom 
they  look  to  gain  spiritual  knowledge  and  even  worldly  power. 
Human  ghosts  are  among  the  principal  of  these  phantasmal 
figures.  There  is  no  doubt  that  honest  visionaries  describe 
ghosts  as  the}' really  appear  to  their  perception,  while  even  the 
impostors  who  pretend  to  see  them  conform  to  the  descrip- 
tions thus  established ;  thus,  in  West  Africa,  a  man's  kit  or 
soul,  becoming  at  his  death  a  sisa  or  ghost,  can  remain  in  the 
house  with  the  corpse,  but  is  only  visible  to  the  wong-man, 
the  spirit- doctor.^  Sometimes  the  phantom  has  the  charac- 
teristic quality  of  not  being  visible  to  all  of  an  assembled 
company.  Thus  the  natives  of  the  Antilles  believed  that 
the  dead  appeared  on  the  roads  when  one  went  alone,  but 
not  when  many  went  together ;  ^  thus  among  the  Finns  the 
ghosts  of  the  dead  were  to  be  seen  by  the  shamans,  but  not 
by  men  generally  unless  in  dreams.^  Such  is  perhaps  the 
meaning  of  the  description  of  Samuel's  ghost,  visible  to 
the  witch  of  Endor,  but  not  to  Saul,  for  he  has  to  ask  her 
what  it  is  she  sees.*  Yet  this  test  of  the  nature  of  an 
apparition  is  one  which  easily  breaks  down.  We  know  well 
how  in  civilized  countries  a  ciu'rent  rumour  of  some  one 
having  seen  a  phantom  is  enough  to  bring  a  sight  of  it  to 
others  whose  minds  are  in  a  properly  receptive  state.  The 
condition  of  the  modern  ghost- seer,  whose  imagination 
passes  on  such  slight  excitement  into  positive  hallucination, 
is  rather  the  rule  than  the  exception  among  uncultured  and 
intensely  imaginative  tribes,  whose  minds  may  be  thrown  off 
their  balance  by  a  touch,  a  word,  a  gesture,  an  unaccustomed 
noise.  Among  savage  tribes,  however,  as  among  civilized 
races  who  have  inherited  remains  of  early  philosophy  formed 
under  similar  conditions,   the  doctrine  of  visibility  or  in- 

'  Steinliauser,  'Religion  des  Negers,'  in  'Magazm  der  Evang.  Missionen,' 
Basel,  1856,  No.  2,  p.  135. 

^  *  Historie  del  S.  D.  F>Tnando  Colombo,'  tr.  Alfonao  Ulloa,  Venice,  1571, 
p.  127  ;  Eng  Tr.  in  I'inkerton,  vol.  xii.  p.  80. 

•  Gastrin,  'Finn.  Myth.' p.  120. 

*  I.  >Sani.  xxviii.  12. 


ANIMlSiL 


447 


s  that  tha 
rom  whom 
(lly  power, 
hantasmal 
s  describe 
e  even  the 
le  deserip- 
in's  kli  or 
lain  in  the 
i'ong-man, 
lie  charac- 
assembled 
leved  that 
alone,  but 
Finns  the 
s,  but  not 
ii'haps  the 
visible  to 

to  ask  her 
ire  of  an 
inow  well 
some  one 
it  of  it  to 
te.     The 
agination 
icination, 
ured  and 
irown  of( 
3Ustomed 
civilized 
y  formed 
ty  or  ill" 

Missionen,' 
mice,  1571, 


visibility  of  phantoms  has  been  obviously  sliuped  with 
reference  to  actual  experience.  To  declare  that  souls  or 
ghosts  are  necessarily  either  visible  or  invisible,  would 
directly  contradict  the  evidence  of  men's  senses.  But  to 
assert  or  imply,  as  the  lower  races  do,  that  they  are  visible 
sometimes  and  to  some  persons,  but  not  always  or  to  every 
one,  is  to  lay  down  an  explanation  of  facts  which  is  not 
indeed  our  usual  modern  explanation,  but  which  is  a  per- 
fectly rational  and  intelligible  product  of  early  science. 

Without  discussing  on  their  merits  the  accounts  of  what 
is  called  *'  second  sight,"  it  maybe  pointed  out  tluit  they  are 
related  among  savage  tribes,  as  when  Captain  Jonathun 
Carver  obtained  from  a  Cree  medicine-man  a  true  prophecy 
of  the  arrival  of  a  canoe  with  news  next  day  at  noon ;  or 
when  Mr.  J.  Masoxi  Brown,  travelling  with  two  voyageurs 
on  the  Coppermine  River,  was  met  by  Indians  of  the  very 
band  he  was  seeking,  these  having  been  sent  by  their 
medicine-man,  who,  on  enquiry,  stated  that  "  He  saw  them 
coming,  and  heard  them  talk  on  their  journey."  ^  Tlieso  are 
analogous  to  accounts  of  the  IlighLiiul  second-sight,  as  when 
Pennant  heard  of  a  gentleman  of  the  Hebrides,  said  to  have 
the  convenient  gift  of  foreseeing  visitors  in  time  to  get  ready 
for  them,  or  when  Dr.  Johnson  was  told  by  another  laird 
that  a  labouring  man  of  his  had  predicted  his  return  to  the 
island,  and  described  the  peculiar  livery  his  servant  had  been 
newly  dressed  in.'' 

As  a  genera^  rule,  people  are  apt  to  consider  it  impossible 
for  a  man  to  be  in  two  places  at  once,  and  indeed  a  saying 
to  that  etfect  has  become  a  popular  saw.  But  the  rule  is  so 
far  from  being  universally  accepted,  that  the  word  "  biloca- 
tion  "  has  been  invented  to  express  the  miraculous  faculty 
possessed  by  certain  Saints  of  the  lloman  Church,  of  being 
in  two  places  at  once ;  like  St.  Alfonso  di  Liguori,  who  had 
the  useful  power  of  preaching  his  sermon  in  church  while 

>  Brintou,  'Myths  of  New  World,'  p.  269. 

*  Pennant,  '2nil  Tour  in  Scotland,'  in  Pinkerton,  voL  iii.  p.  316  ;  Johnson, 
'Journey  to  the  Hebrides.' 


li 


il-'l^i 


i  ^ 


!  i 


m-^, 


448 


ANIMISM. 


he  was  coni'essiiig  penitents  at  home.^  The  reception  and 
explanation  of  these  various  chisses  of  stories  fits  perfectly 
with  the  primitive  animistic  theory  of  apparitions,  and  tlie 
same  is  true  of  the  following  most  numerous  class  of  the 
second-siglit  narratives. 

Death  is  the  event  which,  in  all  stages  of  culture,  brings 
thought  to  bear  most  intensely,  though  not  always  most 
healthily,  on  the  problems  of  psychology.  The  apparition 
of  the  disembodied  soul  has  in  all  ages  been  thought  to  bear 
especial  relation  to  its  departure  from  its  body  at  death. 
This  is  well  shown  by  the  reception  not  only  of  a  theory  of 
ghosts,  but  of  a  special  doctrine  of  "  wraiths"  or  "  fetches." 
Thus  the  Karens  say  that  a  man's  spirit,  appearing  after 
death,  may  thus  announce  it.^  In  New  Zealand  it  is  ominous 
to  see  the  figure  of  an  absent  person,  for  if  it  be  shadowy 
and  the  face  not  visible,  his  death  may  ere  long  be  expected, 
but  if  the  face  be  seen  he  is  dead  already.  A  party  of 
jNIaoris  (one  of  whom  told  the  story)  were  seated  round  a 
fire  in  the  open  air,  when  there  appeared,  seen  only  by  two 
of  them,  the  figure  of  a  relative  left  ill  at  home  ;  they 
exclaimed,  the  figure  vanished,  and  on  the  return  of  the  party 
it  appeared  that  die  sick  man  had  died  about  the  time  of  the 
vision.^  Examining  the  position  of  the  doctrine  of  wraiths 
among  the  higher  rac(.  s^  we  find  it  especially  prominent  in 
three  intellectual  districts,  Christian  hagiology,  popular  folk- 
lore, and  modern  spiritualism.  St.  Anthony  saw  the  soul  of 
St.  Ammonias  carried  to  heaven  in  the  midst  of  choirs  of 
angels,  the  same  day  that  the  holy  hermit  died  five  days' 
journey  off  in  the  desert  of  Nitria;  when  St.  Ambrose  died 
on  Easier  Eve,  several  newly-baptized  children  saw  the  holy 
bishop,  and  p(Muted  him  out  to  their  parents,  but  these  with 
their  less  pure  eyes  could  not  behold  him ;  and  so  forth. ^ 

»  J.  Gardner,  '  Fuitlis  of  the  World,' 3.  v.  '  bilocation.' 

«  Mason,  '  Karens,'  1.  c.  \).  198. 

3  Sliorthind,  'Trads.  of  Now  Zcalnnd,*  p.  140  ;  Polack,  '  M.  and  C.  of  NeW 
Zealanders,'  vol.  i.  j).  268.  .See  also  Ellis,  '  Madagascar,*  vol.  L  p.  393  ;  J.  G. 
Muller,  p.  261. 

■•  Calniet,  'Diss,  sur  les  Esiirits,'  vol.  i.  ch.  xl. 


ption  and 

perfectly 

t,  and  tlie 

iss  of  the 

ire,  brings 
vays  most 
apparition 
rfht  to  bear 
r  at  death, 
a  theory  of 
"  fetches." 
taring  after 
is  ominous 
be  shadowy 
le  expected, 
A  party  of 
:ed  round  a 
only  by  two 
lome  ;  they 
of  the  party 
time  of  the 
of  wraiths 
roniinent  in 
Upular  folk- 
the  soul  of 
of  choirs  of 
d  five  days* 
Imbrose  died 
saw  the  holy 
t  these  with 
id  so  forth.* 


[.  an.l  C.  of  New 


ANIMISM. 


449 


Folk-lore  examples  abound  in  Silesia  and  the  Tyrol,  where 
the  gift  of  wraitli-seeing  still  flourishes,  with  the  customary 
details  of  funerals,  churches,  four-cross-roads,  and  headless 
phantoms,  and  an  especial  association  with  Now  Year's  Eve. 
The  accounts  of  "  second-sight "  from  North  Britain  mostly 
belong  to  a  somewhat  older  date.  Thus  the  St.  Kilda  people 
used  to  be  haimted  by  their  own  spectral  doubles,  fore- 
runners of  impending  death,  and  in  1799  a  traveller  writes 
of  the  peasants  of  Kircudbrightshire,  "It  is  common  among 
them  to  fancy  that  they  see  the  wraiths  of  jiersons  dyin^f, 
which  will  be  visible  to  one  and  not  to  others  present  witli 
him.  Within  these  last  twenty  years,  it  was  hardly  possible 
to  meet  with  any  person  who  Iiad  not  seen  many  wraiths  sind 
ghosts  in  the  course  of  his  experience."  Those  who  discuss 
the  authentieit}'  of  the  second-sight  stories  as  actual 
evidence,  nmst  bear  in  mind  that  they  prove  a  little  too 
much ;  they  vouch  not  only  for  human  apparitio«is,  but  for 
such  phantoms  as  demon-dogs,  and  for  still  r^ore  fanciful 
symbolic  omens.  Thus  a  phantom  shroud  seen  in  spiritual 
vision  on  a  living  man  predicts  his  death,  innnediate  if  it  is 
up  to  his  head,  less  nearly  approaching  if  it  is  only  up  to 
his  waist;  and  to  see  in  spiritual  vision  a  spark  of  tiro  fall 
upon  a  Persian's  arm  or  breast,  is  a  forerunner  of  a  dead 
child  to  be  seen  in  his  arms.^  As  visionaries  often  see 
phantoms  of  living  persons  without  any  renuirkable  event 
coinciding  with  their  hallucinations,  it  is  naturally  admitted 
that  a  man's  phantom  or  "  double  "  may  be  seen  witliout 
portending  anything  in  particular.  The  spiritualistic  theory 
specially  insists  on  cases  of  apparition  where  the  person's 
death  corresponds  more  or  less  nearly  with  the  time  when 
some  friend  perceives  his  phantom.^  Narratives  of  this  class, 
which  I  can  here  only  specify  without  arguing  on  them,  are 

•  Wuttke,  '  Volksiibcfglimbo.'pp.  44,  56,  208;  Brand,  'Popular  Antiiiuitie.s,' 
vol.  iii  pp.  lo.'i,  235  ;  JohuHon,  'Journey  totlio  Ilubridos  ; '  Martin,  '  Western 
Islamis  ot  Scotliind,'  in  I'iiikertou,  vol.  iii.  p.  670. 

'•*  See  K.  1).   Owen,  '  Footfalls  on  the  lioundary  of  another  World  ' ;  Mrs. 
Crowe,  '  Night-Side  of  Nature  ; '  llowit^'s  Tr.  of  Enuouioser'a  *  Majiio,'  etc. 
VOL.   1.  "  <» 


I 


450 


ANIMISM. 


in 


^iv 


abundantly  in  circulation.  Thus,  I  have  an  account  by  a 
lad}',  who  "  saw,  as  it  were,  the  form  of  some  one  laid  out," 
near  the  time  when  a  brother  died  at  Melbourne,  and  who 
mentions  another  lady  known  to  her,  who  thought  she  saw 
her  own  futlier  look  in  at  the  church  window  at  the  moment 
he  was  dying  in  his  own  house.  Another  account  is  sent  me 
by  a  Shetland  lad}',  who  relates  that  about  twenty  years  ago 
she  and  a  girl  leading  her  pony  recognized  the  familiar 
figure  of  one  Peter  Sutherland,  whom  they  knew  to  be  at 
the  time  in  ill-health  in  Edinburgh  ;  he  turned  a  corner  and 
they  saw  no  more  of  him,  but  next  week  came  the  news  of 
his  sudden  death. 

That  the  apparitional  human  soul  bears  the  likeness  of  its 
fleshly  body,  is  the  principle  implicitly  accepted  by  all  who 
believe  it  really  and  objectively  present  in  dreams  and 
visions.  My  own  vie'tv  is  that  nothing  but  dreams  and 
visions  could  have  ever  put  into  men's  minds  such  an  idea 
as  that  of  souls  being  ethereal  images  of  bodies.  It  is  thus 
habitually  taken  for  granted  in  animistic  philosophy,  savage 
or  civilized,  that  souls  set  free  from  the  earthly  body  are 
recognized  by  a  likeness  to  it  which  they  still  retain,  whethei 
as  ghostly  wanderers  on  earth  or  inhabitants  of  the  world 
beyond  tlie  grave.  Man's  spirit,  says  Swedenborg,  is  his 
mind,  which  lives  after  death  in  complete  human  form,  and 
this  is  tlie  poet's  dictum  in  '  In  Memoriam  :  * 

"  Eternal  form  shall  still  divide 
Tlie  eternal  soul  from  all  beside ; 
And  I  shall  know  him  when  we  meet." 

This  world-wide  tliought,  coming  into  view  here  in  a  multi- 
tude of  cases  from  all  grades  of  culture,  needs  no  collection 
of  ordinary  instances  to  illustrate  it.^  But  a  quaint  and 
special  group  of  beliefs  will  serve  to  display  the  thorough- 

*  The  conception  of  the  soul  as  a  small  human  imac;e  is  found  in  various 
districts;  see  Eyre,  'Australia,'  vol.  ii.  p.  356  ;  St.  John,  'Far  East,'  vol.  1. 
p.  189  (Dayaks) ;  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  194  (N.  A.  Ind.).  The  idea  of  a  soul  as 
•  sort  of  "thumbling"  is  familiar  to  the  Hindus  and  to  German  folk-lore  ; 
compare  the  representations  of  tiny  souls  in  mediaeval  pictures. 


'  if 


ANIMISM. 


451 


iount  by  a 
;  laid  out," 
3,  and  who 
flit  she  saw 
he  moment 
b  is  sent  me 
,y  years  ago 
he  familiar 
3W  to  be  at 
L  corner  and 
the  news  of 

keness  of  its 
1  by  all  who 
dreams   and 
dreams  and 
such  an  idea 
J.     It  is  thus 
;ophy,  savage 
hly  body  are 
tain,  whethei 
of  the  world 
inborg,  is  his 
an  form,  and 


.  •• 


re  in  a  multi- 
no  collection 
a  quaint  and 

the  thorough- 
found  in  variona 

'Far  East,'  vol.  i. 
idea  of  a  aoul  aa 

lerraan  folk-lore  ; 
es. 


ness  with  which  the  soul  is  thus  conceived  as  an  image  of 
the  body.  As  a  consistent  corollary  to  such  an  opinion,  it 
is  argued  that  the  mutilation  of  th(^  body  will  have  a  cor- 
resjoonding  effect  upon  the  soul,  and  very  low  savage  races 
have  philosophy  enough  to  work  out  this  idea.  Thus  it  was 
recorded  of  the  Indians  of  Brazil  b}--  one  of  the  early 
European  visitors,  that  they  "  believe  that  the  dead  arrive 
in  the  other  world  wounded  or  hacked  to  pieces,  in  fact  just 
as  they  left  this.^  Thus,  too,  the  Australian  who  has  slain 
his  enemy  will  cut  off  the  right  thumb  of  the  corpse,  so  tliat 
although  the  spirit  will  become  a  hostile  j^host,  it  cannot 
throw  with  its  mutilated  hand  the  shadowy  spear,  and  may 
be  safely  left  to  wander,  malignant  but  harmless.^  Tiie 
negro  fears  long  sickness  before  death,  such  as  will  send 
him  lean  and  feeble  into  the  next  world.  His  theory  of  the 
mutilation  of  soul  with  body  could  not  be  brought  more 
vividly  into  view  tiiau  in  that  ugly  story  of  the  AVest  India 
l^lanter,  whose  slaves  began  to  seek  in  suicide  at  once  relief 
from  jjresent  misery  and  restoration  to  their  native  land  ; 
but  the  white  man  was  too  cunning  for  them,  he  cut  off  the 
heads  and  hands  of  the  corpses,  and  the  survivors  saw  that 
not  even  death  could  save  them  from  a  master  who  could 
maim  their  very  souls  in  the  next  world.^  The  same  rude 
and  primitive  belief  continues  among  nations  risen  far 
higher  in  intellectual  rank.  The  Chinese  hold  in  especial 
horror  the  punishniout  of  decapitation,  considering  that  he 
who  quits  this  world  lacking  a  member  will  so  arrive  in  the 
next,  and  a  case  is  recorded  lately  of  a  criminrJ  at  Amoy 
who  for  this  reason  begged  to  die  instead  by  the  cruel  death 
of  crucifixion,  arid  was  crucified  accordingly.^  The  series 
ends  as  usual  in  the  folk-lore  of  the  civilized  world.  The 
phantom  skeleton  i)i   chauis    that   haunted    the  house    at 

»  Miv^'iilh.iiies  do  Giuulavo,  p.  110;  UalYA,  '  ludio  Orientali,' p.  107. 
3  OlcKloKl  in  '  Tr.  Etli.  Son.'  vol.  iii   p  287. 
»  Waitz,  vol.  ii.  p.  194  ;  Roiiier,  'Guinea,'  ji  42. 

*  M'itiers   vol.  ii.  p.  J^H,  76:5  ;  Purclins,  vol.  iii.  p.   495  ;  J.  Jones  in  'Ti 
Ell..  S  ,r  •  vol.  iii.  p.  138. 

0  0  2 


Ml 


/ 


ii  f 


t. 


1 1 


]^: 


452 


ANIMISM. 


Bologna,  sliowed  the  way  to  the  garden  where  was  bui  ied 
the  real  chamed  fleshless  skeleton  it  belonged  to,  and  came 
no  more  when  the  remains  had  been  duly  buried,  ^^hen 
the  Earl  of  Cornwall  met  the  fetch  of  his  friend  William 
Ilnfus  carried  black  and  naked  on  a  black  goat  across  the 
Bodmin  moors,  he  saw  that  it  was  wounded  through  the 
midst  of  the  breast ;  and  afterwards  he  heard  that  at  that 
verj'  hour  the  king  had  been  slain  in  the  New  Forest  by  the 
arrow  of  Walter  Tirell.^ 

In  studying  the  nature  of  the  soul  as  conceived  among 
the  lower  races,  and  in  tracing  such  conceptions  onward 
among  the  higher,  ciroviinstantiiil  details  are  available.  It 
is  as  widely  recognizud  among  mankind  that  souls  or  ghosts 
have  voices,  as  that  they  have  visible  forms,  and  indeed  the 
evidence  for  both  is  of  the  same  nature.  Men  who  perceive 
evidently  that  souls  do  talk  when  they  present  themselves 
in  drean;  or  vision,  naturally  take  for  granted  at  once  the 
obje'itive  reality  of  the  ghostly  voice,  and  of  the  ghostly 
form  from  which  it  proceeds.  This  is  involved  in  the  series 
of  narratives  of  spiritual  communications  with  living  men, 
from  savagery  onward  to  eivilization,  while  the  more  modern 
doctrine  of  the  subjectivity  of  such  phenomena  recognizes 
the  phenomena  tliemselves,  but  offers  a  different  explana- 
tion of  them.  One  special  conception,  however,  requires 
particular  rotice.  This  defines  the  spirit-voice  as  being  a 
low  murmur,  chirp,  or  whistle,  as  it  were  the  ghost  of  a 
voice.  The  Algonquin  Indians  of  North  America  could 
hear  the  shadow-souls  of  the  dead  chu-p  like  crickets.^  The 
divine  spirits  of  the  New  Zealand  dead,  coming  to  converse 
with  the  ]iv'ing,  utter  their  words  in  whistling  tones,  and 
such  utteram  IS  by  a  squeaking  noise  are  mentioned  else- 
vhere  in  Polynesia.'     The  Zulu  diviner's  familiar  spirits 


'  Calmet,  vol.  i.  ch.  xxxvL  ;  Plin.  Ep.  7  27  ;  Hunt,  *  Pop.  Romances,'  vol 
il  p.  ir.c. 

'  Le  Jeimein  '  Rel.  dcs  Jdsuites,'  16;59,  p   43  ;  see  1634,  p.  13. 

»  Shovtliind,    'Trails,  of  N.  Z.'  p.  92;  Yate,  p.  140;  R.  Taylor,  p.   104 
1B3 ;  Elii.s,  '  rulyn.  lies.'  vol,  i.  p.  406. 


and  oame 
;(l.  ^Mlen 
id  Willvam 
across  tlie 
irough  the 
iiat  at  tliat 
)rest  by  the 

ived  among 
ons  onward 
.-ailable.     It 
lis  or  ghosts 
d  mdeed  the 
*vho  perceive 
t  themselves 
at  onco  the 
the  ghostly 
hi  the  series 
li  living  men, 
■e  modern 
a  recognizes 
|rent  explana- 
iver,  requires 
e  as  being  a 
ie  ghost  of  a 
imerica  could 
ickets.2    The 
irt  to  converse 
xg  tones,  and 
[entioned  else- 
imiliar  spirits 

Ip.  Romances,'  vol 

I,  p.  13. 

Taylor,  p.  104 


ANIMISM. 


453 


are  ancestral  muues,  who  talk  in  a  low  whistling  tone  short 
of  a  full  whistle,  whence  they  h:i\  e  their  name  of  **  imilozi " 
or  whistlers.^     These  ideas  correspond  with  classic  descrip- 


tions  of   the   ghostly    voice,  as   a 
murmur : " 


twitter  "'    or 


thin 


■'^X*'"''  Ttrptyvia. "  ^ 
"  Umbra  cruontii  lioiui  visa  est  assisture  lecto, 
Atque  hoec  exigui)  murmure  verba  loqui."  ' 

As  the  attributes  of  the  soul  or  ghost  extend  to  other 
spiritual  beings,  and  the  utterances  of  such  are  to  a  great 
extent  given  by  the  voice  of  mediums,  we  connect  these 
accounts  with  the  notion  that  the  language  of  demons  is 
also  a  low  whistle  or  mutter,  whence  the  well-known  practice 
of  whispering  or  murmuring  charms,  the  "  susurrus  necro- 
manticus  "  of  sorcerers,  to  whom  the  already  cited  descrip- 
tion of  "wizards  that  peep  (i.  e,  chirp)  and  mutter"  is 
widely  applicable.* 

The  conception  of  dreams  and  visions  as  caused  by  pre- 
sent objective  figures,  and  the  identification  of  such  pliantom 
souls  with  the  shadow  and  the  breath,  has  led  man\-  a 
people  to  treat  souls  as  substantial  material  beings.  Tlius 
it  is  a  usual  proceeding  to  make  openings  through  solid 
materials  to  allow  souls  to  pass.  The  Iroquois  in  old  times 
used  to  leave  an  opening  in  the  grave  lor  the  lingering  soul 

»  Callaway,  'RhI.  of  Amazulu,'  pp.  265,  348,  370. 

»  Homer.  11.  xxiii.  100. 

>  Ovid.  Fast.  V.  457. 

*  Isaiah  viii.  19  ;  xxix.  4.  The  Arabs  hate  whi.slling  (el  sifr),  it  is  talking 
to  devils  (l-iurton,  '  First  Footslops  in  East  Africa,'  p.  142).  "  Nicolaus  Hi'ini- 
gius,  whoso  '  Ditnionolatreia' is  one  of  tlie  gliastliust  vohimus  in  tlio  glia^^tly 
literature  of  witchcraft,  cites  Herniolaus  Piarliarns  as  having  heard  tin;  voice 
sah-sibilantis  dcemoiiis,  and,  after  giving  other  instancis,  adduces  the  autho- 
rity of  Psellus  to  prove  tiiat  the  devils  generally  .sjieak  very  h)W  and  con- 
fvisedly  in  order  not  to  be  caught  fibbing,"  Di.  Sebastian  Kvans  in  '  Nature,' 
June  22,  1871,  p.  140.  (Nicolai  Hemigii  Daenionolatreia,  Col.  Agripi'.  1596, 
ib.  i.  c.  8,  "  pleneque  alia'  vocem  illis  esse  aiunt  qualein  emittunt  i|u;  os  in 
doliuin  aut  restain  riniosam  msertuni  habent" — "  ut  Daemones  e  pelvi  stridulft 
voce  ac  tenui  sibilo  verba  ederent. "). 


.'/.,    i 


I 


454< 


ANIMISM. 


to  visit  its  body,  and  some  of  them  still  bore  holes  in  the 
coffin  for  the  same  purpose.^  The  Malagasy  sorcerer,  for 
the  cm'e  of  a  sick  man  who  had  lost  his  soul,  would  make  a 
hole  in  the  burial-house  to  let  out  a  spirit,  which  he  would 
catch  in  his  cap  and  so  conve}'  to  the  patient's  head.^  The 
Chinese  make  a  hole  in  the  roof  to  let  out  the  soul  at 
death.'*  And  lastly,  the  custom  of  opening  a  window  or 
door  for  the  departing  soul  when  it  quits  the  body  is  to  this 
day  a  very  familiar  superstition  in  France,  Germany,  and 
England.*  Again,  the  souls  of  the  dead  are  thought  suscep- 
tible of  being  beaten,  hurt,  and  driven  like  any  other  living 
creatures.  Thus  the  Queensland  aborigines  would  beat  the 
air  in  an  annual  mock  fight,  held  to  scare  away  the  souls  that 
death  hud  let  loose  among  the  living  since  last  year.^  Thus 
North  American  Indians,  when  they  had  tortured  an  enemy 
to  death,  ran  about  crying  and  beating  with  sticks  to  scare 
the  ghost  away ;  they  have  been  known  to  set  nets  round 
their  cabins  to  catch  and  keep  out  neighbours'  departed 
souls ;  fanc3ing  the  soul  of  a  dying  man  to  go  out  at  the 
wigwam  roof,  they  would  habitually  beat  the  sides  with 
sticks  to  drive  it  forth  ;  we  even  hear  of  the  widow  going 
off  from  her  husband's  funeral  followed  by  a  person  flourish- 
ing a  handful  of  twigs  about  her  head  like  a  flyflapper,  to 
drive  off  her  husband's  ghost  and  leave  her  free  to  marry 
again.®  AVith  a  kindLer  feeling,  the  Congo  negroes  ab- 
stained for  a  whole  year  after  a  death  from  sweeping  the 
house,  lest  the  dust  should  injure  the  delicate  substance  of 
the  ghost;''  the  Tonquinese  avoided  house-cleaning  during 
the  festival  when  the  souls  of  the  dead  came  back  to  their 

'  Morgan,  'Iroquois,'  p.  176. 
'  Fhicourt,  '  lliuliigMscar,'  p,  101. 

*  Iiiistiaii,  '  P.sychologii.',' }).  15. 

*  JI  niiinr,  'Tnidition.s  Populaires,'  p.  142;  Wuttke,  '  Volksaberglaube,' 
p.  209  ;  Grimii),  'D.  M.'  p.  801  ;  Meiuers,  vol.  ii.  p.  761. 

'  Lang,  '  Queensland,' p.  441  ;  Bouwick,  'Tasnianians,' p.  187. 

*  Charlevoix,  '  Nouvelle  France,' vol.  vi.  j)p.  76,  l'J2  ;  Le  Jeune  in  'Eel.  Je 
la  Nouveile  France,'  ]6:J4,  p.  23;  1639,  p.  44  ;  Tanner's  'Narr.'  p.  292 
Peter  Jones,  'Hist,  of  Ojibway  Indians,' p.  99. 

''  r.a^tian,  'Menscli,'  vol.  ii.  p.  3:.i3. 


oles  in  the 
orcerer,  for 
)ultl  make  a 
;h  he  would 
Lead.2  The 
the  soul  at 

window  or 
dy  is  to  this 
n-many,  and 
iglit  suscep- 
other  living 
uld  beat  the 
lie  souls  th:it 
ear.5     Thus 
3d  an  enemy 
c'ks  to  scare 
t  nets  round 
rs'  departed 
cfo  out  at  the 
3  sides  with 
widow  going 
•son  flourish- 
flyflapper,  to 
fee  to  marry 

negroes  ab- 

sweeping  the 

substance  of 

waning  during 

back  to  their 


Volksabevglaube,' 

).  187. 

Jeune  in  *  Rel.  d© 

B  'Narr.'  p.  292 


; 


ANIMISM. 


455 


houses  for  the  New  Year's  visit;'  and  it  seems  likely  that 
the  special  profession  of  the  lloman  "  everriatores ''  who 
swept  the  houses  out  after  a  funeral,  was  connected  with  a 
smiilar  idea.^     To  this  day,  it  remains  a  German  peasants- 
saying  that  It  is  wrong  to  slam  a  door,  lest  one  should  pinch 
a  soul  lu  it.3     The  not  uncommon  practice  of  strewing  ashes 
to  slioNv  the  footprints  of  ghosts  or  demons  takes  for  granted 
that    they    are    substantial    bodies.      In  the  literature  of 
amnnsm,  extreme  tests  of  the  weight  of  ghosts  are  now  and 
«ien  forthcoming.     They  range  from  the  .leclaration  of  a 
iiasuto  divmer  that  the  late  queen  had  been  bestridin-  his 
shoulders,  and  he  never  felt  such  a  weight  in  his  life,  to 
Glanvil's  story  of  David  Hunter  the  neat-herd,  wlio  lifted 
up  the  old  woman's  glmst,  and  she   felt  just  like  a  ba-^  of 
leathers  m  his  arms,  or  the  pathetic   German   supei  atiou 
that  the  dead  mother's  coming  back  in  the  niglit  to  suckle 
the  baby  she  has  left  on  earth,  may  be  known  bv  the  hollow 
pressed  down  in  the  bed  where  she  lay,  and  at  last  down  to 
the  alleged  modern  spiritualistic  reckoning  of  the  weight  of 
a  human  soul  at  from  3  to  4  ounces.'* 

Explicit  statements  as  to  the  substance  of  soul  are  to 
be  found  both  among  low  and  higli  races,  in  an  instructive 
series  of  definitions.  The  Tongans  imagined  the  human 
soul  to  be  the  finer  or  more  aeriform  part  of  tlie  body, 
which  leaves  it  suddenly  at  the  moment  of  death  ;  some- 
thing comparable  to  the  perfume  and  essence  of  a  flower  as 
related  to  the  more  solid  vegetable  fibre.^  The  Greenland 
seers  described  the  soul  as  they  habitually  perceived  it  in 
their  visions;  it  is  pale  and  soft,  they  said,  and  he  who 
tries  to  seize  it  feels  nothing,  for  it  has  no  flesh  nor  bone 

'  Meiners,  vol.  L  p.  318. 

"  Festus,  8.  V.  '  everriatores ; '  see  Bastian,  I  c,  and  compare  Hartknoch, 
cited  below,  vol.  ii.  p.  40. 

'  Wuttke,  'Volksaberglaiibe.'pp.  132,  216. 

*  Casalis.  'Basutos,'  p.  28.5;  Gkuvil,  *  Saducismus  Triumphatus,' part  ii. 
p.  161  ;  Wuttke,  p.  216  ;  Bustiau,  '  rsychologie,'  p.  192. 
'  Mariner,  'Tonga  Is.'  vol.  ii.  p.  136. 


45G 


ANIMESM. 


f^r 


:!l  ij  ■ 


nor  sinew.*  The  Caribs  did  not  think  the  soul  so  immiv 
teriiil  as  to  be  invisible,  but  said  it  was  subtle  and  thin  like 
a  purified  body.^  Turning  to  higher  races,  we  may  take 
the  Siamese  as  an  example  of  a  people  who  conceive  of 
souls  as  consisting  of  subtle  matter  escaping  sight  and 
touch,  or  as  united  to  a  swiftly  moving  aerial  body.^  In 
the  classic  world,  it  is  recorded  as  an  opinion  of  Epicurus 
that  "  they  who  say  the  soul  is  incorporeal  talk  folly,  for  it 
could  neither  do  nor  suffer  anything  were  it  such."*  Among 
the  Fathers,  Irenaeus  describes  souls  as  incorporeal  in  com- 
parison with  mortal  bodies,^  and  Tertullian  relates  a  vision 
or  revelation  of  a  certain  Montanist  prophetess,  of  the  soul 
seen  by  her  corporeally,  thin  and  lucid,  aerial  in  colour  and 
human  in  form.^  For  an  example  of  mediaeval  doctrine, 
may  be  cited  a  14th  century  English  poem,  the  "  Ayenbite 
of  Inwyt "  (i.  e.  "  Remorse  of  Conscience  ")  which  points 
out  how  the  soul,  by  reason  of  the  thinness  of  its  substance, 
suffers  all  the  more  in  purgatory : 

'■   I  he  Boul  is  more  tendx'e  and  nesche 
Than  the  bodi  that  hath  bones  aud  fleysche; 
Thunne  the  soul  that  is  so  teudere  of  kinde, 
Mote  nedis  huie  penaunce  hardere  y-finde, 
Than  eni  bodi  that  evere  on  live  was."' 


The  doctrine  of  the  ethereal  soul  passed  on  into  more 
modern  philosophy,  and  the  European  peasant  holds  fast  to 
it  still ;  as  Wuttke  says,  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  have  to  him 
a  misty  and  evanescent  materiality,  for  they  have  bodies  as 
ve  have,  though  of  other  kind :  they  can  eat  and  drink, 
they  can  be  wounded  and  killed.^    Nor  was   the   ancient 


»  Cranz,  '  Gronland,' p.  257. 
»  liocliL'fort,  '  lies  Antilles,'  p.  429. 

'  Louhere,  'Siam,'  vol.  i.  p.  458  ;  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asien,'  vol.  iii.  p.  269; 
see  278. 

•*  Diog.  Laert.  x.  67—8  ;  see  Serv.  ad  Mn.  iv.  654. 

'  Ivi'iiffiiis  contra  Hajres,  v.  7,  1  ;  see  Origeu.  De  Princip.  iL  8,  2. 

•  Tertiill.  De  Aniin;'    9. 

'  Hiiin])ole,  'Ayeubice  of  Inwyt.' 

"  Wuttke,  '  Volksuberglaube,'  pp.  216,  226. 


ul  80  immfl' 
and  thin  like 
we  may  take 
)  conceive  of 
ig    sight  and 
al  body.8    in 
,  of  Epicurus 
ilk  folly,  for  it 
,ch."*  Among 
poreal  in  corn- 
elates  a  vision 
;ss,  of  the  soul 
1  in  colour  and 
iffival  doctrine, 
the  "  Ayenbite 
•)  which  points 
)f  its  substance, 


ysche ; 
dnde, 
inde, 
'7 

id  on  into  more 
,ant  holds  fast  to 
lead  have  to  him 
ey  have  bodies  as 
11  eat  and  drink, 
was   the   ancient 


Uien,' vol.  iii.  P- 259; 


incip.  iL  8,  »• 


ANIMISM. 


4f-'u 


doctrine  ever  more  distinctly  stated  than  by  a  niodorn 
spiritualistic  writer,  who  observes  that  "  a  spirit  is  lu)  im- 
material substance;  on  the  contrary,  the  spiritual  orj;aiii/.a- 
tion  is  composed  of  matter  ....  in  a  very  high 
state  of  refinement  and  attenuation."  ^ 

Among  rude  races,  the  original  conception  of  the  human 
soul  seems  to  have  been  that  of  ethereality,  or  vaporous 
materiality,  which  has  hekl  so  large  a  ])lace  "i  human 
thought  ever  since.  In  fact,  the  later  metaphysical  notion 
of  immateriality  could  scarcely  have  conveyed  an}  .  iciiniiig 
to  a  savage.  It  is  moreover  to  be  noticed  thnt,  us  to  the 
vvliole  nature  !  action  of  apparitional  souls,  the  lower 
philosophy  t.^capes  various  difficulties  which  down  to 
modern  times  have  j^erplexed  metaphysicians  and  theolo- 
gians of  the  civilized  world.  Considering  the  thin  ethereal 
body  of  the  soul  to  be  itself  sufficient  and  suititble  for  visi- 
bility, movement,  and  speech,  the  jirimitive  animists  had 
no  need  of  additional  hypotheses  to  account  for  these  mani- 
festations, theological  theories  such  as  we  may  rind  detailed 
by  Calmet,  as  that  innnaterial  souls  have  their  own  vaporous 
bodies,  or  occasionally  have  such  vaporous  bodies  provided 
for  them  by  supernatural  means  to  enable  them  to  ap[)ear 
as  spectres,  or  that  they  possess  the  power  of  condensing 
the  circumambient  air  into  phantom-like  bodies  to  invest 
themselves  in,  or  of  forming  from  it  vocal  instruments.^  It 
appears  to  have  been  within  s^'stematic  schools  of  civilized 
philosophy  that  the  transcendental  definitions  of  the  imma- 
terial sold  were  obtained,  by  abstraction  from  the  primitive 
conception  of  the  ethereal-material  soul,  so  as  to  reduce  it 
from  a  physical  to  a  metaphysical  entity. 

Departing  from  the  body  at  the  time  of  death,  the  soul 
or  spirit  is  considered  set  free  to  linger  near  the  tomb,  to 
wander  on  earth  or  flit  in  the  air,  or  to  travel  to  the  proper 
region  of  spirits — the  world  beyond  the  grave.  The  prin- 
cipal conceptions  of  the  lower  psychology  as  to  a  Future 

*  A.  J.  Davis,  '  Philo.sophy  of  Spiritual  Intercourse,'  New  York,  1851,  p.  49. 
'  Calmet,  vol.  i.  ch.  xli.,  etc. 


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#•' 


458 


ANIMISM. 


Life  will  be  considered  in  the  following  chapters,  but  for 
the  present  purpose  of  investigating  the  theory  of  souls  in 
general,  it  will  be  well  to  enter  here  upon  one  department 
of  the  subject.  Men  do  not  stop  short  at  the  persuasion 
that  death  releases  the  soul  to  a  free  and  active  existence, 
but  they  quite  logically  proceed  to  assist  nature,  by  slaying 
men  in  order  to  liberate  their  souls  for  ghostly  uses.  Thus 
there  arises  one  of  the  most  wide-spread,  distinct,  and  intel- 
ligible rites  of  animistic  religion — that  of  funeral  human 
sacrifice  for  the  service  of  the  dead.  When  a  man  of  rank 
dies  and  his  soul  departs  to  its  own  place,  wherever  and 
whatever  that  place  may  be,  it  is  a  rational  inference  of 
early  philosophy  that  the  souls  of  attendants,  slaves,  and 
wives,  put  to  death  at  his  funeral,  will  make  the  same 
journey  and  continue  their  service  in  the  next  life,  and  the 
argument  is  frequently  stretclied  further,  to  include  the 
souls  of  new  victims  sacrificed  in  order  that  they  may  enter 
upon  the  same  ghostly  servitude.  It  will  appear  from  the 
ethnography  of  this  rite  that  it  is  not  strongly  marked  in 
the  very  lowest  levels  of  culture,  but  that,  arising  in  the 
higher  savagery,  it  developes  itself  in  the  barbaric  stage,  and 
thenceforth  continues  or  dwindles  in  survival. 

Of  the  murderous  practices  to  which  this  opinion  leads, 
remarkably  distinct  accounts  may  be  cited  from  among 
tribes  of  the  Indian  Archipelago.  The  following  account  is 
given  of  the  funerals  of  great  men  among  the  savage  Kayans 
of  Borneo : — "  Slaves  are  killed  in  order  that  they  may 
follow  the  deceased  and  attend  upon  him.  Before  they  are 
killed  the  relations  who  surround  them  enjoin  them  to  take 
great  care  of  their  master  when  they  join  him,  to  watch  and 
shampoo  him  when  he  is  indisposed,  to  be  always  near  him, 
and  to  obey  all  his  behests.  The  female  relatives  cf  the 
deceased  then  take  a  spear  and  slightly  wound  the  victims, 
after  which  the  males  spear  them  to  death."  Again,  the 
opinion  of  the  Idaan  is  "  that  all  whom  they  kill  in  this 
world  shall  attend  them  as  slaves  after  death.  This  notion 
of  futui'e  interest  in  the  destruction  of  the  human  species  ia 


ANIMISM. 


459 


,  but  for 
'  souls  in 
partinent 
ersuasion 
existence, 
>y  slaying 
IS.     Thus 
and  intel- 
al  human 
,n  of  ranlv 
rever  and 
ference  of 
ilaves,  and 

the  same 
e,  and  the 
iclude   the 

may  enter 
ir  from  the 

marked  in 
ing  in  the 

stage,  and 

hion  leads, 
om   among 

account  is 
iige  Kayans 

they  may 
re  they  are 
lem  to  take 

watch  and 
s  near  him, 
ives  cf  the 
he  victims, 

Again,  the 
kill  in  this 
This  notion 

n  species  ia 


a  great  impediment  to  an  intercourse  with  them,  as  murder 
goes  farther  than  present  advantage  or  resentment.  From 
the  same  principle  they  will  purchase  a  slave,  guilty  of  any 
capital  crime,  at  fourfold  his  value,  that  they  may  be  his 
executioners."  With  the  same  idea  is  connected  the  fero- 
cious custom  of  "head-hunting,"  so  prevalent  among  the 
Dayaks  before  Rajah  Brooke's  time.  They  considered  that 
the  owner  of  every  human  head  they  could  procure  would 
serve  them  in  the  next  world,  where,  indeed,  a  man's  rank 
would  be  according  to  his  number  of  heads  in  this.  They 
would  continue  the  mourning  for  a  dead  man  till  a  head  was 
brought  in,  to  provide  him  with  a  slave  to  accompany  him 
to  the  "  habitation  of  souls  ;  "  a  father  who  lost  his  child 
would  go  out  and  kill  the  first  man  he  met,  as  a  funeral 
ceremony ;  a  young  man  might  not  marry  till  he  had  pro- 
cured a  head,  and  some  tribes  would  bury  with  a  dead  man 
the  first  head  he  had  taken,  together  with  spears,  cloth,  rice, 
and  betel.  Waylaying  and  murdering  men  for  their  heads 
became,  in  fact,  the  Dayaks'  nationol  sport,  and  they  re- 
marked "the  white  men  read  bookrf,  we  hunt  for  heads 
instead."  ^  Of  such  rites  in  the  Pacific  islands,  the  most 
hideously  purposeful  accounts  reach  us  from  the  Fiji  group. 
Till  lately,  a  main  part  of  the  ceremony  of  a  great  man's 
funeral  was  the  strangling  of  wives,  friends,  and  slaves,  for 
the  distinct  purpose  of  attending  him  into  the  world  of 
spirits.  Ordinarily  the  first  victim  was  the  wife  of  the 
deceased,  and  more  than  one  if  he  had  several,  and  their 
corpses,  oiled  as  for  a  feast,  clothed  with  new  fringed 
girdles,  with  heads  dressed  and  ornamented,  and  vermilion 
and  turmeric  powder  spread  on  their  faces  and  losoms, 
were  laid  by  the  side  of  the  dead  warrior.  Associates  and 
inferior   attendants  were  likewise  slain,  and  these  bodies 

'  'Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  ii.  p.  359;  vol.  iii.  pp.  104,  556;  Earl, 
•Eastern  SeaH,'  p.  2(56;  St.  John,  'Fur  East,'  vol.  i.  pp.  .'52,  73,  79,  119; 
Mnndy,  *  Narr.  from  Brooke's  Journals, 'p  'lO'-i.  Hi;;uls  wcro  taken  as  funeral 
otlerings  by  the  Garos  of  N.  E.  liidiii,  Eliot  in  *  As.  lies.'  vol.  iii.  p.  28, 
Dalton,  'Descr.  Ethnol.  of  Bengal,'  p.  67  ;  see  also  p.  46—7  (Kukis). 


5-1 


460 


ANIMISM. 


■I    ) 


'M  u 


'  . 


' ' 


,'  /I 


J! 


?**>' 


were  spoken  of  as  "  grass  for  bedding  the  grave."  Wliea 
Ra  Mbithi,  the  pride  of  Somosomo,  was  lost  at  sea,  seven- 
teen of  his  wives  were  killed  ;  and  after  the  news  of  the 
massacre  of  the  Namena  people,  in  1839,  eighty  women 
were  strangled  to  accompany  the  spirits  of  their  murdered 
husbands.  Such  sacrifices  took  place  under  the  same  pres- 
sure of  public  opinion  which  kept  up  the  widow-burning  in 
modern  India.  The  Fijian  widow  was  worked  upon  by  her 
relatives  with  all  the  pressure  of  persuasion  and  of  menace  ; 
she  understood  well  that  life  to  her  henceforth  would  mean 
a  wretched  existence  of  neglect,  disg)  ace,  and  destitution  ; 
and  tyrannous  custom,  as  hard  to  struggle  against  in  the 
savage  as  in  the  civilized  world,  drove  her  to  the  grave. 
Thus,  far  from  resisting,  she  became  importunate  for  death 
and  tlie  new  life  to  come,  and  till  public  opinion  reached  a 
more  enlightened  state,  the  missionaries  often  used  their 
influence  in  vain  to  save  from  the  strangling-cord  some  wife 
whom  they  could  have  rescued,  but  who  herself  refused  to 
live.  So  repugnant  to  the  native  mind  was  tiie  idea  of  a 
chieftain  going  unattended  into  the  other  world,  that  the 
missionaries'  prohibition  of  the  cherished  custom  was  one 
reason  of  their  dislike  to  Christianity.  INIany  of  the 
nominal  Christians,  when  once  a  chief  of  theirs  was  shot 
from  an  ambush,  esteemed  it  most  fortunate  that  a  stray 
shot  at  the  same  time  killed  a  j^oung  man  at  a  distance  from 
him,  and  thus  provided  a  companion  for  the  spirit  of  the 
slain  chief.^ 

In  America,  the  funeral  human  sacrifice  makes  its  charac- 
teristic appearance.  A  good  example  may  be  taken  from 
among  the  Osages,  whose  habit  was  sometimes  to  plant  in 
the  cairn  raised  over  a  corpse  a  pole  with  an  enemy's  scalp 
hanging  to  the  top.  Their  notion  was  that  by  taking  an 
enemy  and  suspending  his  scalp  over  the  grave  of  a  deceased 
friend,  the  spirit  of  the  victim  became  subjected  to  the  spirit 

>  T.  Willinms,  'Fiji,'  vol.  i.  pp.  188—204  ;  Moriuer,  'Tonga  Is.'  vol.  ii. 
p.  220.  For  New  Zeiiland  accounts,  see  R.  Taylor,  'New  Zealand,'  pp.  £18, 
227  ;  Polack,  'New  Zealanders,'  vol.  i.  pp.  66,  78,  116. 


ANIMISM. 


401 


I."  Wlie.i 
sea,  seven- 
ews  of  the 
Lty  women 
'  murdered 
same  pres- 
■burning  in 
pon  by  her 
of  menace ; 
^rould  mean 
iestitution  ; 
inst  in  the 

the  grave. 
te  for  death 
I  reached  a 

used  their 
d  some  wife 

refused  to 
e  idea  of  a 
kl,  that  the 
)m  was  one 
any  of  the 
L-s  was  shot 
;hat  a  stray 
istance  from 
jpirit  of  the 

s  its  charac- 
taken  from 
s  to  phmt  in 
nemy's  scalp 
3y  taking  an 
af  a  deceased 
I  to  the  spirit 

nga  Is.'  vol.  ii. 
jealand,'  pp.  218, 


of  the  buried  warrior  in  the  land   of  spirits.     Hence  the 
last  and  best  service  that  could  be  performed  for  a  deceased 
relative  was  to  take  an  enemy's  life,  and  thus  transmit  it  by 
his  scalp.i     The  correspondence  of  this  idea  with  that  just 
mentioned   among  the    Duyaks  is   very   striking.      With  a 
similar    intention,   the    Caribs    would    slay   on   the   dead 
master's  grave  any  of  his  slaves  they  could  lay  hands  on.^ 
Among  the   native   peoples    risen   to    considerably  hi-die'r 
grades  of  social  and  political  hie,  these  practices  were^iot 
suppressed  but  exaggeratea,  in  the  ghastlv  sacrifices  of  war- 
riors,  slaves,  and  wives,  who  departed  to  continue  their 
duteous  offices  at  the  funeral  of  the  chief  or  monarch  in 
Central  America  »  and  Mexico,*  in  Bogota  ^  and  Peru.«    It 
is  interesting  to  notice,  in  somewhat  favourable  contrast 
with   these    customs    of  comparatively  cultured   American 
nations,  the  practice  of  certain  rude  tribes  of  the  Noilh- 
West.      The    Quakeolths,    for    instance,    did    not   actually 
sacrifice  the  widow,  but  they  made  her  rest  her  head  on  lieV 
husband's  corpse  while  it  was  being  burned,  until  at  last 
she  was  dragged  more  dead  than  alive  from  the  fiames ;  if 
she  recovered,  she  collected  her  husband's  ashes  and  carried 
them  about  with  her  for  three   years,   during  which  any 
levity  or  deficiency  of  grief  would  render  her  an  outcast. 
This  looks  like  a  mitigated  survival  from  an  earlier  custom 
of  actual  widow-burning.7 

Of  such  funeral  rites,  carried  out  to  the  death,  graphic 

'  J.  M'Coy,   'Hist,  of  Baptist  Indian  Missions,' p.  360;  Waltz    vol   iii 
p.  200.     See  also  Schoolcraft,  '  Indian  Tribes.'  part  ii.  p.  133  (Con.aJch.s). 
Rochefort,  'lies  Antilles,'  pp.  429,  612  ;  see  also  J.  G.  Uiilk-r,  iq>.  174 

*  Oviedo,   'Relation  de  Ciieba,'  p.  140;  Charlevoix,   'Nouv.  Fr*  vol  vi 
p.  178  (Nnt.-hez);  Waitz,   vol  iii.   p.  219.  See   iJriiilon,    'Myths  of  lYew 
World,'  p.  2:^9.  ^ 

*  Brassenr,  '  Mexique,'  vol.  iii.  p.  573. 

'  Pie.lrahita,  'Nuovo  Reyno  de  Granada,'  part.  i.  lib.  1.  c,  3. 

8  Cieza  de  Leon,  p.  161;  Rivero  and  Tschudi,  '  Pernv.  Ant.'  p  200- 
Prescott,  'Peru,' vol.  i.  p.  29.  See  statements  as  to  eflwies,  J.  G  Muller' 
p.  379.  o     '     •  "•  iuuuer, 

'  Simpson,  '  Journey,'  vol.  i.  p.  190 ;  similar  practice  amoni?  TakuUi  or 
Carrier  Ind.,  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  200. 


162 


ANIMISM. 


il 


U' 


and  horrid  descriptions  are  recorded  in  the  countries  across 
Africa — East,  Central,  and  West.  A  heudman  of  the  Wa- 
doe  is  buried  sitting  in  a  shallow  pit,  and  with  the  corpse  a 
male  and  female  slave  alive,  he  with  a  bill-hook  in  his  hand 
to  cut  fuel  for  his  lord  in  the  death-world,  she  seated  on  a 
little  stool  with  the  dead  chief's  head  in  her  lap.  A  chief 
of  Unj'amwezi  is  entombed  in  a  vaulted  pit,  sitting  on  a 
low  stool  with  a  bow  in  his  right  hand,  and  provided  with  a 
pot  of  native  beer ;  with  him  are  shut  in  alive  three  women 
slaves,  and  the  ceremony  is  concluded  with  a  libation  of 
beer  on  the  earth  heaped  up  above  them  all.  The  same 
idea  which  in  Guinea  makes  it  common  for  the  living  to 
send  messages  by  the  dying  to  the  dead,  is  developed  in 
Ashanti  and  Dahome  into  a  monstrous  system  of  massacre. 
The  King  of  Dahome  must  enter  Deadland  with  a  ghostly 
court  of  hundreds  of  wives,  eunuchs,  singers,  drummers, 
and  soldiers.  Nor  is  this  all.  Captain  Burton  thus  de- 
scribes the  yearly  "  Customs  :" — "  They  periodically  supply 
the  departed  monarch  with  fresh  attendants  in  the  shadowy 
world.  For  unhappily'  these  murderous  scenes  are  an  ex- 
pression, lamentably  mistaken  but  perfectl}'  sincere,  of  the 
liveliest  filial  piety."  Even  this  annual  slaughter  must  be 
supplemented  by  almost  dail}-^  murder  : — "Whatever  action, 
however  trivial,  is  performed  by  tlie  King,  it  must  dutifully 
be  reported  to  his  sire  in  the  shadowy  realm.  A  victim, 
almost  always  a  war-captive,  is  chosen  ;  the  message  is  de- 
livered to  him,  an  intoxicating  draught  of  rum  follows  it, 
and  he  is  dispatched  to  Hades  in  the  best  ot  humours.'*^ 
In  southern  districts  of  Africa,  accounts  of  the  same  class 
begin  in  Congo  and  Angola  with  the  recorded  slaying  of 
the  dead  man's  favourite  wives,  to  live  with  him  in  the  other 
world,  a  practice  still  in  vogue  among  the  Clievas  of  the 
Zambesi  district,  and  formerly  known  among  the  Maravis ; 
while  the  funeral  sacrifice  of  atten  ants  with  a  chief  is  a 

'  Burton,  '  Central  Afr.'  vol.  i.  p.  124  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  25 ;  '  Dahomo,'  vol.  ii, 
p.  18,  etc.  ;  'Tr.  Etli.  Sec'  vol.  iii.  p.  403;  J.  L.  Wilson,  'W.  Afr.'  pp.  203^ 
219,  394.    See  also  H.  Rowley,  '  Mibsiou  to  Central  Africa,'  p.  229. 


ANIMISM. 


463 


tries  across 
of  the  Wa- 
he  corpse  a 
In  his  hand 
seated  on  a 
p.  A  chief 
itting  on  a 
ided  with  a 
aree  women 

lihation  of 

The  same 
le  living  to 
eveloped  in 
if  massacre. 
:h  a  ghostly 

drummers, 
on  thus  de- 
Lcally  supply 
the  shadowy 
5  are  an  ex- 
icere,  of  the 
iter  must  be 
tever  action, 
list  dutifully 
.  A  victim, 
Bssa.ge  is  de- 
n  follows  it, 

humours."^ 
e  same  class 
id  slaying  of 
L  in  the  other 
hevas  of  the 
the  Maravis ; 

a  chief  is  a 

Dahomo,'  vol.  ii. 
W.  Afr.'  pp.  203; 
p.  229. 


thing  of  the  past  among  the  Barotse,  as  among  the  Zulus, 
who  yet  have  not  forgotten  the  days  when  the  chief's  servants 
and  attendant  warriors  were  cast  into  the  fire  which  had 
consumed  his  body,  that  they  might  go  with  him,  and  pre- 
pare things  beforehand,  and  get  food  for  him.* 

If  now  we  turn  to  the  records  of  Asia  and  Europe,  we 
shall  find  the  sacrifice  of  attendants  for  the  dead  widely 
prevalent  in  both  continents  in  old  times,  while  in  the  east 
its  course  may  be  traced  continuing  onward  to  our  own  day. 
The  two  Mohammedans  who  travelled  in  Southern  Asia  in 
the  ninth  century  relate  that  on  the  accession  of  certain 
kings  a  quantity  of  rice  is  prepared,  which  is  eaten  by  some 
three  or  four  hundred  men,  who  present  themselves  volun- 
tarily to  share  it,  thereby  undertaking  to  burn  themselves  at 
the  monarch's  death.  With  this  corresponds  Marco  Polo's 
thirteenth  century  account  in  Southern  India  of  the  king 
of  Maabar's  guard  of  horsemen,  who,  when  he  dies  and  his 
body  is  burnt,  throw  themselves  into  the  fire  to  do  him 
service  in  the  next  world.^  In  the  seventeenth  century  the 
practice  is  described  as  prevaiUng  in  Japan,  where,  on  the 
death  of  a  nobleman,  from  ten  to  thirty  of  his  servants  put 
themselves  to  death  by  the  "  hara  kari,"  or  ripping-up, 
having  indeed  engaged  during  his  lifetime,  by  the  solemn 
compact  of  drinking  wine  together,  to  give  their  bodies  to 
their  lord  at  his  death.  The  Japanese  form  of  modern  sur- 
vival  of  such  funeral  sacrifices  is  to  substitute  for  real  men 
and  animals  images  of  stone,  or  clay,  or  wood,  placed  by 
the  corpse.'  Among  the  Ossetes  of  the  Caucasus,  an  in- 
teresting relic  of  widow-sacrifice  is  still  kept  up  ;  the  dead 
man's  widow  and  his  saddle-horse  are  led  thrice  round  the 
grave,  and  no  man  may  marry  the  widow  or  mount  the 

•  Cavazzi,  'Ist.  Descr,  de'  tre  Kcgni  Congo,  Matainba,  et  Angola,'  Bologna, 
1687,  lib.  i.  264  ;  Waitz,  vol  ii.  pp.  419—21  ;  Callaway,  '  Keligiou  of  Ama- 
Zulu.'  p.  212. 

2  Renfuulot,  *  Ace.  by  two  Mohammedan  Travellers,' London  1733,  p.  81; 
and  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  215  ;  ilarco  Polo,  book  iii.  chap.  xx. ;  and  in 
Pinkerton,  vol.  vii.  p.  162. 

3  Caron,  'Japan,'  ibid.,  p.  622  ;  Siebold,  'Nippon,'  v.  p.  22. 


464 


ANIMISM. 


Pf.fl 


I     ii 


Lf  ill 


^1 


horse  thus  devoted.^  In  China,  legend  preserves  the  me- 
mory of  the  ancient  funeral  human  sacrifice.  The  brother  of 
Chin  Yang,  a  disciple  of  Confucius,  died,  and  his  widow  and 
steward  wished  to  bury  some  living  persons  with  him,  to  serve 
him  in  the  regions  below.  Thereupon  the  sage  suggested 
that  the  proper  victims  would  be  the  widow  and  steward 
themselves,  but  this  not  precisely  meeting  their  views,  the 
matter  dropped,  and  the  deceased  was  interred  without  at- 
tendants. This  story  at  least  shows  the  rite  to  have  been 
not  only  known  but  understood  in  China  long  ago.  In 
modern  China,  the  suicide  of  widows  to  accompany  their 
husbands  is  a  recognized  practice,  sometimes  even  per- 
formed in  public.  Moreover,  the  ceremonies  of  providing 
sedan-bearers  and  an  umbrella-bearer  for  the  dead,  and 
sending  mounted  horsemen  to  announce  beforehand  his 
arrival  to  the  authorities  of  Hades,  although  these  beavers 
and  messengers  are  only  made  of  paper  and  burnt,  seem  to 
represent  survivals  of  a  more  murderous  reality.^ 

The  Aryan  race  gives  striking  examples  of  the  rite  of 
funeral  human  sacrifice  in  its  sternest  shape,  whether  in 
history  or  in  myth,  that  records  as  truly  as  history  the 
manners  of  old  days.^  The  episodes  of  the  Trojan  cap- 
tives laid  with  the  horses  and  hounds  on  the  funeral  pile  of 
Patruklos,  and  of  Evadiie  throwing  herself  into  the  funeral 
pile  of  her  husband,  and  Pausanias's  narrative  of  the  suicide 
of  the  three  Messenian  widows,  are  among  its  Greek  repre- 
sentatives.*   In  Scandinavian  myth,  Baldr  is  burnt  with  liis 


1.1' 


I    .Id 


-  i(      1 


I 


•  '  Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  new  series,  vol.  ii.  p.  374. 

«  Legge,  ' Confucins,'  p.  119  ;  Doolittle,  'Chinese,'  vol.  i.  pp.108,  174, 192. 
The  yiractice  of  attacking  or  killing  all  persons  met  by  a  funeral  ])rocessiori  is 
perlia[i3  generally  conueLtud  witli  timcral  human  sacrifice  ;  anyone  met  on  tho 
road  liy  the  funeral  of  a  Mongol  prince  was  slain  and  ordered  to  go  as  escort ; 
in  the  Kinihunda  country,  any  one  who  meets  a  royal  funeral  procession  is  put 
to  dtath  with  the  other  victims  at  the  grave  (Magyar,  '  Siid.  Afrika,'  p.  353) ; 
see  ali-o  ilariner,  'Tonga  Is.'  voL  L  p.  403  ;  Cook,  '  First  Voy.'  vol.  i.  pp.  146, 
2:i6  (Tahiti). 

^  Jacob  Grimm,  '  Verbrennen  der  Leicheu,'  contains  an  instructive  collectioa 
of  references  and  citations. 

*  Homer.  II.  xxiii.  175 ;  Eurip.  Suppl. ;  Pausauias,  iv.  2. 


ANIMISM. 


4b-5 


'es  the  inc- 
e  brother  of 
3  widow  and 
lim,  to  serve 
;e  suggested 
md  steward 
ir  views,  the 
without  at- 
to  have  been 
ng  ago.     In 
impany  their 
IS  even   per- 
of  providing 
e  dead,  and 
'orehand   his 
hese  beavers 
irnt,  seem  to 

f  the  rite  of 
},  whether  in 
J  hibtory  the 

Trojan  cap- 
uneral  pile  of 
to  the  funeral 
of  the  suicide 

Greek  repre- 
burnt  with  his 


pp.108,  174,192. 
neral  ])rocessioii  is 
my  one  met  on  tlio 
;d  to  go  as  escort ; 
il  procession  is  [tut 
.  AtVika,'p,  353); 
)y.'  vol.  i.  pp.  146, 

structive  collectio* 
2. 


ilwiirf  foot-page,  his  horse  and  saddle  ;  Brjnhild  lies  on  the 
pile  by  her  beloved  Sigurd,  and  men  and  maids  follow  after 
them  on  the  hell-way.i     The  G  uils  in  Ciesar's  time  burned 
at  the  dead  man's  sumptuous  funeral  whatever  was  dear  to 
him,  animals  also,  and  much-loved  slaves  and  clients.^    Old 
mentions  of  Slavonic  heathendom  describe  the  burninf»  of 
the  dead  with  clothing  and  weapons,  horses  and  hounds, 
with  faithful  servants,  and  above   all,   with  wives.     Thus 
St.  Boniface  says  that  "  the  Wends  keep  matrimonial  love 
with  so  great  zeal,  that  the  wife  may  refuse  to  survive  her 
husband,  and  she  is  held  praiseworthy  among  women  who 
slays  herself  with  her  own  hand,  that  she  may  be  burnt  on 
one  pyre  with  her  lord."^     This  Aryan  rite  of  widow-sacri- 
fice has  not  only  an  ethnographic  and  antiquarian  interest, 
but  even  a  place  in  modern  politics.     In  Brahmanic  India 
the  widow  of  a  Hindu  of  the  Brahman  or  the  Ksliatriya 
caste  was  burnt  on  the  funeral  pile  with  her  husband,  as^  a 
sati  or  **  good  woman,"  which  word  has  passed  into  English 
as  Huttee.     Mentioned  in  classic  and  mediaeval  times,  the 
practice  was  in  full  vigour  at  tlie  beginning  of  the  present 
century.*     Often  one  dead  husband  took  many  wives  with 
him.     Some  went  wilhngly  and  gaily  to  the  new  life,  many 
were  driven  by  force  of  custom,   by  fear  of  disgrace,   by 
family   persuasion,  by  priestly  threats   and   promises,   by 
i-'i.^r-r  violence.     When  the  rite  was  suppressed  under  mo- 
der  I  British  rule,  the  priesthood  resisted  to  the  uttermost, 
appealing  to  the  Veda  as  sanctioning  the  ordinance,  and 
demanding  that  the  foreign  rulers  should  respect  it.     Yet 
in  fact,  as  Prof.  H.  H.  Wilson  proved,  the   priests  had 
actually  falsified  their  sacred  Veda  in  support  of  a  rite  en- 
joined by  long  and  inveterate  prejudice,  but  not  by  the 

'  Edda,  'Gylfaginning,' 49  ;  'Brynhildarqvitlm,' etc. 

2  Csesar.  'Bell.  Gall."  vi,  19. 

3  Hanusch,  'Slaw.  Myth.'  p.  145. 

■•  Strabo,  xv.  1,  62;  Cic.  Tusc.  Disp.  v.  27,  78;  Diod.  Sic.  xvii.  CI  ;  xix.  33, 
etc.  ;  Grimm,  '  Verbrenuen, '  p.  261;  Renaudot,  'Two  Mohamniedaus,"  p.  4; 
and  in  Pinkerton,  vol.  vii,  p.  194.  See  Buchanan,  ibid.  pp.  675,  682  ;  W.ml, 
'Hindoos,' vol.  ii.  pp.  298—312. 

VOL.    I.  H    11 


I  (] 


466 


ANIMISM. 


m'-u 


traditional  standards  of  Hindu  faith.  The  ancient  Brah* 
manic  funeral  rites  have  been  minutely  detailed  from  the 
Sanskrit  authorities  in  an  essay  by  Prof.  Max  Miiller. 
Their  directions  are  that  the  widow  is  to  be  set  on  the 
funeral  pile  with  her  husband's  corpse,  and  if  he  be  a  war- 
rior his  bow  is  to  be  placed  there  too.  But  then  a  brother- 
in-law  or  adopted  child  or  old  servant  is  to  lead  the  widow 
down  again  at  the  summons,  **  Bise,  woman,  come  to  the 
world  of  life  ;  thou  sleepest  nigh  unto  him  whose  life  is 
gone.  Come  to  us.  Thou  hast  thus  fulfilled  thy  duties  of 
a  wife  to  the  husband  who  once  took  thy  hand,  and  made 
thee  a  mother."  The  bow,  however,  is  to  be  broken  and 
thrown  back  upon  the  pile,  and  the  dead  man's  sacrificial 
instruments  are  to  be  laid  with  him  and  really  consumed. 
While  admitting  with  Prof.  Muller  that  the  more  modern 
ordinance  of  Suttee-burning  is  a  corrupt  departure  from 
the  early  Brahmanic  ritual,  we  may  nevertheless  find  some 
reason  to  consider  the  practice  as  not  a  new  invention  by 
the  later  Hindu  priesthood,  but  as  the  revival,  under  con- 
genial influences,  of  an  ancient  Aryan  rite  belonging  ori- 
ginall}'  to  a  period  even  earlier  than  the  Veda.  The  ancient 
authorized  ceremony  looks  as  though,  in  a  still  more  ancient 
form  of  the  rite,  the  widow  had  been  actually  sent  with  the 
dead,  for  which  real  sacrifice  a  more  humane  law  substituted 
a  mere  pretence.  This  view  is  supported  by  the  existence 
of  an  old  and  express  prohibition  of  the  wife  being  sacri- 
ficed, a  prohibition  seemingly  directed  against  a  real  cus- 
tom, "  to  follow  the  dead  husband  is  prohibited,  so  says  the 
law  of  the  Brahmans.  With  regard  to  the  other  castes  this 
law  for  women  may  be  or  may  not  be."^  To  treat  the 
Hindu  widow-burning  as  a  case  of  survival  and  revival 
seems  to  me  most  in  accordance  with  a  general  ethnographic 
view  of  the  subject.  Widow-sacrifice  is  found  in  various 
regions  of  the  world  under  a  low  state  of  civilization,  and 


*  Miix  Muller,  •  Todtenbestattung  bei  den  Brahnianen,  in  Zeitschr.  der 
Deu;sch.  Morgenl.  Ges.' vol.  ix.  ;  'Chips,'  vol.  ii.  p  34 ;  Pictet,  'Origiuea 
Indo  Eiiroj).'  part  ii,  p.  526. 


i    i 


icient  Brah« 
:d  from  the 
[ax   Millie  r. 

set  on  the 
he  be  a  war- 
n  a  brother- 
i  the  widow 
3ome  to  the 
hose  life  is 
thy  duties  of 
1,  and  made 

broken  and 
,'s  sacrificial 
yr  consumed, 
lore  modern 
»arture  from 
ss  find  some 
invention  by 
,  under  con- 
donging  ori- 
The  ancient 
more  ancient 
sent  with  the 
N  substituted 
he  existence 

being  sacri- 
;  a  real  cus- 
i,  so  says  the 
3r  castes  this 
ro  treat  the 

and  revival 
ethnographic 
id  in  various 
llization,  and 

in  Zeitschr.  der 
Pictet,  'Origiuea 


ANIMISM. 


467 


this  fits  with  the  hj'pothesis  of  its  having  belonged  to  the 
Aryan  race  while  yet  in  an  CiU-ly  and  barbiu-ous  conditifm. 
Thus  the  prevalence  of  a  rite  of  suttcu  like  that  of  modern 
India  among  ancient  Aryan  nations  settled  in  Europe, 
Greeks,  Scandinavians,  Germans,  Slaves,  may  be  sinii)ly 
accounted  for  by  direct  inheritance  from  the  remote  common 
antiquity  of  them  all.  If  this  theory  be  sound,  it  will  follow 
that  ancient  as  the  Vedic  ordinances  may  be,  they  represent 
in  this  matter  a  reform  and  a  re-action  against  a  yet  more 
ancient  savage  rite  of  widow-sacrifice,  which  they  prohibited 
in  fact,  but  yet  kept  up  in  symbol.  The  history  of  re- 
ligion displays  but  too  plainly  tlie  proneness  of  manlcind  to 
relapse,  in  spite  of  reformation,  into  the  lower  and  darker 
condition  of  the  past.  Stronger  and  more  tenacious  than 
even  Vedic  authority,  the  hideous  custom  of  the  suttee  may 
have  outlived  an  attempt  to  suppress  it  in  early  Brahmanic 
times,  and  the  English  rulers,  in  abolisliing  it,  may  have 
abolished  a  relic  not  merely  of  degenerate  Hinduism,  but 
of  the  far  more  remotely  ancient  savagery  out  of  which  the 
Aryan  civilization  had  grown. 

In  now  passing  from  the  consideration  of  the  souls  of 
men  to  that  of  the  souls  of  the  lower  animals,  we  have  first 
to  inform  ourselves  as  to  the  savage  man's  idea,  which  is 
very  different  from  the  civilized  man's,  of  the  nature  of 
these  lower  animals.  A  remarkable  group  of  observances 
customary  among  rude  tribes  will  bring  this  distinction 
sharply  into  view.  Savages  talk  quite  seriously  to  beasts 
alive  or  dead  as  they  would  to  men  alive  or  dead,  offer  them 
homage,  ask  pardon  when  it  is  their  painful  duty  to  hunt 
and  kill  them.  A  North  American  Indian  will  reason  witn 
a  horse  as  if  rational.  Some  will  spare  the  rattlesnake, 
fearing  the  vengeance  of  its  spirit  if  slain;  others  wiU 
salute  the  creature  reverently,  bid  it  welcome  as  a  friend 
from  the  land  of  spirits,  sprinkle  a  pinch  of  tobacco  on  its 
head  for  an  off"ering,  catch  it  by  the  tail  and  dispatch  it 
with  extreme  dexterity,  and  carry  off  its  skin  as  a  trophy. 

If  an  Indian  is  attacked  and  torn  by  a  bear,  it  is  tliat  the 

II  II  2 


4t)8 


ANIMISM. 


(I     \ 


beast  fell  upon  him  intentionally  in  anger,  perhaps  to  re- 
venge the  hurt  done  to  anotlier  bear.  When  a  bear  is 
killed,  they  will  beg  pardon  of  him,  or  even  make  him  con- 
done the  offence  by  smoking  the  peace-pipe  with  his  mur- 
derers, who  put  the  pipe  in  his  mouth  and  blow  down  it, 
begging  his  spirit  not  take  revenge.^  So  in  Africa,  the  Kafirs 
will  hunt  the  elephant,  begging  him  not  to  tread  on  them 
and  kill  them,  and  when  he  is  dead  they  will  assure  him 
that  the}'  did  not  kill  him  on  purpose,  and  they  will  bury 
his  trunk,  for  the  elephant  is  a  mighty  chief,  and  his  trunk 
is  his  hand  that  he  may  hurt  witlial.  The  Congo  peoi)le 
will  even  avenge  such  a  murder  b}'  a  pretended  attack  on 
the  hunters  who  did  the  deed.''  Such  customs  are  common 
among  the  lower  Asiatic  tribes.  The  Stiens  of  Kambodia 
ask  pardon  of  the  beast  tliey  have  killed;^  the  Ainos  of 
Yesso  kill  the  bear,  offer  obeisance  and  salutation  to  him, 
and  cut  up  his  carcase.*  The  Koriaks,  if  they  have  slain  a 
bear  or  wolf,  will  flay  him,  dress  one  of  their  people  in  the 
skin,  and  dance  round  Iiim,  chanting  excuses  that  they  did 
not  do  it,  and  especially  laying  the  blame  on  a  Russian. 
But  if  it  is  a  fox,  the}'  take  his  skin,  wrap  his  dead  body  in 
hay,  and  sneering  tell  him  to  go  to  his  own  people  and  say 
what  famous  hospitality  he  has  had,  and  how  they  gave  him 
a  new  coat  instead  of  his  old  one.^  The  Samoyeds  excuse 
themselves  to  the  slain  bear,  telling  him  it  was  the  Russians 
who  did  it,  and  that  a  Russian  knife  will  cut  him  up.^  The 
Goldi  will  setup  the  slain  bear,  call  him  "my  lord"  and 
do  ironical  homage  to  him,  or  taking  him  alive  will  fatten 
him  in  a  cage,  call  him  "  sou  "  and  "  brother,"  and  kill 
and  eat  him  as  a  sacrifice  at  a  solemn  festival.^     In  Borneo, 


ii 


'  Schoolcraft,   '  Indian  Tribes,'  p;       i.  p.   543  ;   part  ill.   pp.   229,  620  ; 
Waitz,  vol.  iii.  pp.  191—3. 
'^  Klcinin,  '  Cultur-Gesch.'  vol.  iii.  pp.  355,  364  j  Waltz,  vol.  iL  p.  17& 
^  Muuliut,  '  Iiido-China,'  vol.  i.  p.  2i>:i. 

*  Wood  ill  'Tr.  Etli.  Soc'  vol.  iv.  p.  36. 

*  Bastian,  '  Meuscli,'  vol.  iii.  p.  26. 

*  De  Brosses,  'Dieux  Fetiches,'  p.  61. 

'  Kavenstein,  'Amur,'  p.  382;  T.  W.  Atkinson,  p,  483. 


iii 


i: 


I    'a' 


ANIMISM. 


46? 


rhaps  to  re- 
11  a  bear  is 
,ke  him  con- 
itli  his  mur- 
low  down  it, 
!a,  the  Kafirs 
ead  on  them 
assure  him 
ley  will  bury 
id  his  trunk 
!ongo  people 
id  attack  on 
are  common 
Df  Kanibodia 
the  Ainos  of 
ition  to  him, 
have  slain  a 
leople  in  the 
;hat  they  did 

a  Russian, 
dead  body  in 
ople  and  say 
ley  gave  him 
oyeds  excuse 
the  Russians 
m  up.^  The 
ly  lord  "  and 
re  will  fatten 
Br,"  and  kill 

In  Borneo, 

pp.   229,  520  J 
ol.  ii  p.  17& 


the  Dayaks,  whun  they  havo  caii^lit  an  alligator  with  a 
baited  hook  and  rope,  address  him  with  respect  and  sooth- 
ing till  they  have  his  legs  fast,  and  then  mocking  call  him 
"rajah"  and  "grandfather."^  Thus  when  the  savage  gets 
over  his  fears,  he  still  keeps  uj)  in  ironical  merriment  the 
reverence  which  had  its  origin  in  treuiMiiig  sincerity.  Even 
now  the  Norse  hunter  will  say  with  horror  of  a  bear  that 
will  attack  man,  that  he  can  be   "  no  Christian  b»^ar." 

The  sense  of  an  absolute  psychical  distinction  between 
man  and  beast,  so  prevalent  in  the  civilized  world,  is  hardly 
to  be  found  among  the  lower  races.  Men  to  whom  the 
cries  of  beasts  and  birds  seem  like  human  Lmguage,  and 
their  actions  guided  as  it  were  by  human  thought,  logically 
enough  allow  the  existence  of  souls  to  beasts,  birds,  and 
reptiles,  as  to  men.  The  lower  psychology  cannot  but  re- 
cognize in  beasts  the  very  characteristics  wliich  it  attributes 
to  the  human  soul,  namely,  the  phenomena  of  life  and 
death,  will  and  judgment,  and  the  phantom  seen  in  vision 
or  in  dream.  As  for  believers,  savage  or  civilized,  in  the 
great  doctrine  of  metempsychosis,  these  not  only  consider 
that  an  animal  may  have  a  soul,  but  that  this  soul  may  have 
inhabited  a  human  being,  and  thus  the  creature  may  be  in 
fact  their  own  ancestor  or  once  familiar  friend.  A  line  of 
facts,  arranged  as  waymarks  along  the  course  of  civilization, 
will  serve  to  indicate  the  history  of  opinion  from  savagery 
onward,  as  to  the  souls  of  animals  during  I'fe  and  after 
death.  North  American  Indians  held  every  animal  to  have 
its  spirit,  and  these  spirits  their  future  life  ;  the  soul  of  the 
Canadian  dog  went  to  serve  his  master  in  the  other  world ; 
among  the  Sioux,  the  prerogative  of  having  four  souls  was 
not  confined  to  man,  but  belonged  also  to  the  bear,  the 
most  human  of  animals.^  The  Greenlanders  considered 
that  a  sick  human  soul  might  be  replaced  by  the  sorcerer 
with  a  fresh  healthy  soul  of  a  hare,  a  reindeer,  or  a  young 

»  St.  John,  •  Far  East,'  vol.  ii.  p.  253  (Dayaks). 

'  Charlevoijc,  'Nouvelle  France,'  vol.  vi.  p.  78  ;  Sagard, '  Hiat  du  Canada,* 
p.  497  ;  Schoolcraft,  'Indian  Tribes,'  part  iii.  p.  229. 


I' 


470 


ANIMISM. 


■I    ■ 


'W 


l-i 


11  f    ^HiH^H 


vw^ 


h 


rii:   r 


child.^  Maori  tale-tellers  have  heard  of  the  road  by  which 
the  spirits  of  dogs  descend  to  Reinga,  the  Hnrles  of  the 
departed ;  the  Hovas  of  Madagascar  know  that  the  ghosts 
of  beasts  and  men,  dwelling  in  a  great  mountain  in  the 
south  called  Ambondrombe,  come  out  occasionuUy  to  walk 
among  the  tombs  or  execution -places  of  criminals.^  The 
Kamchadals  held  that  every  creature,  even  the  smallest  fly, 
would  live  again  in  the  under  worhl.^  The  Kukis  of  Assam 
think  that  the  ghost  of  every  animal  a  Kuki  kills  in  the 
chase  or  for  the  feast  will  belong  to  him  in  the  next  life, 
even  as  the  enemy  he  slays  in  the  field  will  then  become  his 
slave.  The  Karens  apply  the  doctrine  of  the  spirit  or 
personal  life-phantom,  which  is  apt  to  wander  from  the 
bodj  and  thus  suffer  injur}^  equally  to  men  and  to  animals.'* 
The  Zulus  say  the  cattle  they  kill  come  to  life  again,  and 
become  the  property  of  the  dwellers  in  the  world  beneath.^ 
The  Siamese  butcher,  when  in  defiance  of  the  ver^'  prin- 
ciples of  his  Buddhism  he  slaughters  an  ox,  before  he  kills 
the  creature  has  at  least  the  grace  to  beseech  its  spirit  to 
seek  a  happier  abode.^  In  connexion  with  such  transmi- 
gration, Pythagorean  and  Platonic  philosophy  gives  to  the 
lower  animals  undying  souls,  while  other  classic  opinion 
may  recognize  in  beasts  only  an  inferior  order  of  soul,  only 
the  "  anima  "  but  not  the  human  "  animus  "  besides.  Thus 
Juvenal  • 

"  Principio  indulsit  communis  conditor  illis 
Tantum  auimas ;  nobis  auimum  quoque.  .  .  ."  ' 

Through  the  middle  ages,  controversy  as  to  the  psychology 
of  brutes  has  lasted  on  into  our  own  times,  ranging  between 

»  Ciaiiz,  'Grbnland,'  p.  257. 

8  Taylor,  'New  Zciilaiul,'  p.  271  ;  Ellis,  'Madagascar,' vol.  L  p.  429. 

■  Steller,  '  Kamtsohatka,'  p.  269. 

*  Stewart,    'Kukis;    Dalton,  1.   o.  ;'    Cross,    'Karens,*  L   o.  j    ' 
*KaieiiK,'  1.  c. 

•  Callaway,  'Zulu  Tales,"  vol.  i.  p.  317. 
»  Low  in  '  Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  voL  1.  p.  426.     See  Meinera,  vol.  L  p.  220 

▼Ol.  ii.  p.  791. 

'  Juvenal.  Sat.  xv.  148. 


Mason, 


>ad  by  which 

[fides  of  the 
it  the  ghosts 
iitain  in  the 
uiUy  to  walk 
iinals.2     The 

smallest  fly, 
Ids  of  Assam 

kills  in  the 
the  next  life, 
n  become  his 
the  spirit  or 
(ler  from  the 
cl  to  animals/ 
fe  again,  and 
orld  beneath.^ 
lie  very  prin- 
before  he  kills 
h  its  spirit  to 
such  transmi- 
ly  gives  to  the 
lassie  opinion 
L'  of  soul,  only 
)esides.     Thus 


" » 


the  psychology 
anging  between 

vol.  i.  p.  429. 

18/  L   0. ;   Maaon, 

inera,  vol.  L  p.  220 


ANIMISM. 


471 


two  extremes :  on  the  one  the  theory  of  Descartes  which 
reduced  animals  to  mere  machines,  on  the  other  what  Mr. 
Alger  defines  as  "the  faith  that  animals  have  immiitc-rial 
and  deathless  souls."     Among  modern  speculations  may  be 
instanced  that  of  Wesley,  who  thought  that  in  the  next  life 
••nunals  will  be  raised  even  above  their  bodily  and  mental 
state  at  the  creation,  "  the  horridness  of  tlieir  appearance 
will  be  exchanged  for  their  priimeval  beauty,"  and  it  even 
may  be  that  they  will  be  made  what  men  are  now,  creatures 
capable  of  religion.     Adam  Clarke's  argument  for  the  future 
hfe  of  animals  rests  on  abstract  justice  ;  whereas  they  did 
not  sin,  but  yet  are  involved  in  the  sutierings  of  sinful  man, 
and  cannot  have  in  the  present  state  the  happiness  designed 
for  them,  it  is  reasonable  that  they  must  have  it  in  anollier.^ 
iVlthough,   however,  the  primitive  belief   in    the  souls  of 
animals  still  survives  to  some  extent  in  serious  philosophy, 
it  is  obvious  that  the  tendency  of  educated   opinion  on  the 
question  whether  brutes  have  soul,  as  distinguished  from 
life  and  nnnd,  has  for  ages  been  in  a  negative  and  scepticid 
direction.      The   doctrine    has    ftillen  from  its  once  high 
estate.     It  belonged  originally  to  real,  though  rude  science. 
It  has  now  sunk  to  become  a  favourite  topic  in  that  mild 
speculative  talk  which   still  does  duty  so  largely  as  intel- 
lectual conversation,  and  even  then  its  propounders  defend 
it  with  a  lurking  consciousness  of  its  being  alter  all  a  piece 
of  sentimental  nonsense. 

Animals  being  thus  considered  in  the  primitive  psychology 
to  have  souls  like  human  beings,  it  follows  as  the  simplest 
matter  of  course  that  tribes  who  kill  wives  and  slaves,  to 
dispatch  their  souls  on  errands  of  duty  with  their  dej[)ait(Ml 

'  .\ Iger,  '  Future  Life,' p.  632,  and  soe  '  liililid-iajiliv,'  appendix  ii. ;  Wesley, 
*Scriiii)ii  on  Rom.  viii.  19— 22  ;'  Adam  Clarke,  '  Coninu'ntary,'  on  same  text. 
This,  by  the  way,  is  the  converse  view  to  JJLdlarmine's,  who  so  patiently  let 
the  llea,s  bite  him,  saying,  "  We  shall  have  heaven  to  reward  us  for  our  suffer- 
ings, bnt  these  poor  creatures  have  notliing  but  the  enjoyment  of  the  present 
life."— Bayle,  '  Hiog.  Die'  The.  argument  in  Bailer's  '  Analogy,'  part  i.  ch.  i. 
puts  the  evidence  for  souls  of  brutes  on  much  the  sumo  footing  as  that  for 
souls  of  men. 


9\ 


I   V 


!  I 


472 


ANIMISM. 


lords,  may  also  kill  animals  in  order  that  their  spirits  may 
do  such  service  as  is  proper  to  them.  The  Pawnee  warrior's 
horse  is  slain  on  his  grave  to  be  ready  for  him  to  mount 
again,  and  the  Comanche's  best  horses  are  buried  with  his 
favourite  weapons  and  his  pipe,  all  alike  to  be  used  in  the 
distant  happy  hunting-grounds.^  In  South  America  not 
only  do  such  rites  occur,  but  they  reach  a  practically 
disastrous  extreme.  Patagonian  tribes,  says  D'Orbigny, 
believe  in  another  life,  where  they  are  to  enjoy  perfect 
hapi^iness,  therefore  they  bury  with  the  deceased  his  arms 
and  ornaments,  and  even  kill  on  his  tomb  all  the  animals 
which  belonged  to  him,  that  he  may  find  them  in  the  abode 
of  bliss  ;  and  this  opposes  an  insurmountable  barrier  to  all 
•civilization,  by  preventing  them  from  accumulating  property 
and  fixing  their  habitations.^  Not  only  do  Pope's  now 
hackneyed  lines  exi)ress  a  real  motive  with  which  the 
Indian's  dog  is  buried  with  him,  but  on  the  North  American 
continent  the  s[)irit  of  the  dog  has  another  remarkable  office 
to  perform.  Certain  Esquimaux,  as  Cranz  relates,  would 
lay  a  dog's  head  in  a  child's  grave,  that  the  soul  of  the  dog, 
who  ever  finds  his  home,  may  guide  the  helpless  infant  to 
the  land  of  souls.  In  accordance  with  this.  Captain 
Scorcsby  in  Jameson's  Land  found  a  dog's  skull  in  a  small 
grave,  probably  a  child's.  Again,  in  the  distant  region  of 
the  Aztecs,  one  of  the  principal  funeral  ceremonies  was  to 
slaughter  a  techichi,  or  native  dog ;  it  was  burnt  or  buried 
with  the  corpse,  with  a  cotton  thread  fastened  to  its  neck, 
and  its  office  was  to  convey  the  deceased  across  the  deep 
waters  of  Chiubnahuapan,  on  the  way  to  the  Land  of  the 
Dead.^  The  dead  Buraet's  favourite  horse,  led  saddled  to 
the    grave,  killed,  and  flung  in,  may  serve  for    a    Tatar 


*  Schoolcraft,  '  Indian  Tribes,'  part  i.  pp.  237,  262 ;  part  ii.  p.  68. 

*  D  Orbigny,  'L'Honinie  Aniericain,'  vol.  i.  p.  196;  vol.  ii.  pp.  23,  78; 
Falkiier,  '  Patagonia,' p.  118;  Musters,  '  Patagonians,' p.  178. 

8  Kgede,  '  Greenland,'  p.  152  ;  Cranz,  p.  301%;  see  Nilsson,  p.  140.  Torque- 
madu,  'Monaiquia  Indiana,'  xiiu  ch.  47;  Clavigero,  'Mcssico,'  vol.  ii 
pp.  94-6. 


rits  may 
warrior's 
;o  mount 
with  his 
d  in  the 
3rica  not 
radically 
'Orhigny, 
,y  perfect 
[  his  arms 
,e  animals 
the  abode 
crier  to  all 
g  property 
ope's  now 
which  the 
I  American 
cable  office 
ites,  would 
oi  the  dog, 
s  infant  to 
s,  Captain 
in  a  small 
it  region  of 
nies  was  to 
t  or  buried 
to  its  neck, 
,s  the  deep 
,and  of  the 
saddled  to 
>r    a    Tatar 


p.  68. 
ii.  pp.  23,  78  ; 

140.    Tiuque- 
(Bsico,'  vol.   ii 


ANIMISM. 


473 


example.^  In  Tonquin,  even  wild  animals  have  been 
customarily  drowned  at  funeral  ceremonies  of  princes,  to  be 
at  the  service  of  the  depurted  in  the  next  world.-  Amung 
Semitic  tribes,  an  instance  of  the  custom  may  be  found  in 
the  Arab  sacrifice  of  a  camel  on  the  grave,  for  the  dead 
man's  spirit  to  ride  upon.'^  Among  the  nations  of  the 
Aryan  race  in  Europe,  the  prevalence  of  such  rites  is  deep, 
wide,  and  full  of  purpose.  Thus,  warriors  were  provided  in 
death  with  horses  and  housings,  with  hounds  and  f  ilcons. 
Customs  thus  described  in  chronicle  and  legend,  are  vouched 
for  in  our  own  time  by  the  opening  of  old  barbaiic  burial- 
places.  How  clear  a  relic  of  savage  meaning  lies  here  may 
be  judged  from  a  Livonian  account  as  late  as  the  fourteenth 
century,  wliich  relates  how  men  and  women,  slaves,  sheep, 
and  oxen,  with  other  things,  were  burnt  with  the  deiid,  who, 
it  was  believed,  would  reach  some  region  of  the  living,  and 
find  there,  with  the  multitude  of  cattle  and  slaves,  a  country 
of  life  and  hapi)iness.*  As  usual,  these  rites  may  be  traced 
onward  in  survival.  The  Mongols,  who  formerly  slaughtered 
camels  and  horses  at  their  owner's  burial,  have  been  induced 
to  rei)lace  the  actual  sacrifice  by  a  gift  of  the  cattle  to  the 
Lamas.^  The  Hindus  olfer  a  black  cow  to  the  lirahmans, 
in  order  to  secure  their  passage  across  the  Vaitarani,  the 
river  of  death,  and  will  often  die  gras[)ing  the  cow's  tail  as 
if  to  swim  across  in  herdsman's  fashion,  lioldiu'f  on  to  a 
cow.'  It  is  mentioned  as  a  belief  in  Northern  Europe  that 
he  who  has  given  a  cow  to  the  poor  will  lind  a  cow  to  take 

*  Georgi,  '  Reise  im  Russ.  R.'  vol.  i.  p.  312. 

'  Biinm,  '  Tonquin,'  in  Pinkerton,  voL  ix.  p.  704. 

'  W.  G.  Palgrave,  'Arabia,' vol.  i.  p.  10;  Bastiun,  '  Men.sch,*  vol.  ii.  p.  .334; 
Waitz,  vol.  ii.  p.  619  (Gallas). 

*  Grimm,  '  Verbrennen  der  Lciehen.'  A  cirious  correspondence  in  the 
practice  of  cutting  off'  a  fowl's  liead  as  a  funi-Tul  rite  is  to  be  noticed  iimDiig 
the  Yorubas  of  W.  Africa  (IJurton,  '  W.  and  W.'  p.  2'20),  Chuwnslies  of 
Siberia  (Castren,  '  Finn,  Myth.'  p.  lliO),  old  llussiaas  (Griuuu,  •  Verbrunuen,' 
p.  '264). 

*  Ikstian,  '  Mensch,' vol.  ii.  p.  335. 

*  (.  olebrooke,  '  Essajs,'  vol.  i.  p.  177  ;  Ward,  '  Hindoos,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  62, 
284,  o6l. 


474 


ANIMISM. 


m 


f|f: 


iffn 


W 


him  over  the  bridge  of  the  dead,  and  a  custom  of  leading  a 
cow  in  the  funeral  procession  is  said  to  have  been  kept  up 
to  modern  tinies.^  All  these  rites  probably  belong  together 
as  connected  with  ancient  funeral  sacrifice,  and  the  survival 
of  the  custom  of  sacrificing  tlie  warrior's  horse  at  his  tomb 
is  3'et  more  striking.  Saint-Foix  long  ago  put  the  f 'rench 
evidence  very  forcibly.  Mentioning  the  horse  led  at  the 
funeral  of  Charles  VI.,  with  the  four  valets-de-pied  in  black, 
and  bareheaded,  holding  the  corners  of  its  cnparison,  he 
recals  the  horses  and  servants  killed  and  buried  with  pra^- 
Christian  kings.  And  that  his  readers  may  not  think  this 
an  extraordinary  idea,  he  brings  forward  the  records  of 
property  and  horses  being  presented  at  the  offertory  in 
Paris,  in  1329,  of  Edward  III.  presenting  horses  at  King 
John's  funeral  in  London,  and  of  tlie  funeral  service  for 
Bertrand  Dnguesclin,  at  St.  Denis,  in  1380,  when  horses 
were  offered,  the  Bishop  of  Auxerre  laid  his  hand  on  their 
heads,  and  the}'  were  afterwards  compounded  for.^  Germany 
retained  the  actual  sacrifice  within  the  memory  of  living 
men.  A  cavahy  general  named  Frederick  Kasimir  was 
buried  at  Treves  in  1781  according  to  the  forms  of  the 
Teutonic  Order ;  his  horse  was  led  in  the  procession,  and 
the  coffin  having  been  lowered  into  the  grave,  the  horse  was 
killed  and  thrown  in  upon  it.^  This  Wiis,  perhaps,  the  last 
occasion  when  such  a  sacrifice  was  consummated  in  solemn 
form  in  Europe.  But  that  pathetic  incident  of  a  soldier's 
funeral,  the  leading  of  the  saddled  and  bridled  charger 
in  the  mournful  procession,  keeps  up  to  this  day  a 
lingering  reminiscence  of  the  grim  religious  rite  now  passed 
away. 

Plants,  partaking  with  animals  the  phenomena  of  life  and 
death,  health  and  sickness,  not  unnaturally  have  some  kind 
of  soul  ascribed  to  them.     In  fact,  the  notion  of  a  vegetable 

'  Maimliardt,  '  Gbtterwelt  der  Deutschen,  etc'  vol.  i.  p.  319. 
2  Saint-Foix,  '  Essais  historiques  sur  Paris,' in  '  (Euvrea  Comp.' Maestricht, 
1778,  vol.  iv.  p.  150. 
•  J.  M.  Kemble,  '  Horn  Ferales,'  p.  66. 


iplif 


Leading  a 
1  kept  up 
together 
3  survival 
his  tomb 
le  French 
ed  at  the 
[  in  black, 
orison,  he 
with  prsB- 
think  this 
records  of 
ffertory  in 
s  at  King 
service  lor 
hen  horses 
nd  on  their 
Germany 
•y  of  living 
asimir   was 
)rms  of  the 
cession,  and 
le  horse  was 
lips,  the  last 
ed  in  solemn 
,f  a  soldier's 
(Ued  charger 
this    day    a 
,e  now  passed 

na  of  life  and 
Lve  some  kind 
of  a  vegetable 

319. 

Oomp.'  Maestricht, 


ANIMISM. 


•/•) 


soul,  common  to  plants  and  to  the  higher  organisms  possess- 
ing an  animal  soul  in  addition,  was  familiar  to  medieval 
philosophy,  and  is  not  yet  forgotten  by  naturalists.  But  in 
the  lower  ranges  of  culture,  at  least  within  one  wide  district 
of  the  world,  the  souls  of  plants  are  much  more  fully 
identified  with  the  souls  of  animals.  The  Society  Islanders 
seem  to  have  attributed  "  varua,"  i.  e.,  surviving  soul  or 
spirit,  not  to  men  only  but  to  animals  and  plants.^  The 
Dayaks  of  Borneo  not  only  consider  men  and  animals  to 
have  a  spirit  or  living  principle,  whose  departure  from  the 
body  causes  sickness  and  eventually  death,  but  they  also 
give  to  the  rice  its  "  samangat  padi,"  or  "  spirit  of  the 
paddy,"  and  they  hold  feasts  to  retain  this  soul  securely, 
lest  the  crop  should  decay .^  The  Karens  say  that  plants  as 
well  as  men  and  animals  have  their  "  la  "  ("  kelah  "),  and 
the  spirit  of  sickly  rice  is  here  also  called  back  like  a  human 
spirit  considered  to  have  left  the  body.  Their  formulas  for 
the  purpose  have  even  been  written  down,  and  this  is  part 
of  one  : — "  0  come,  rice  kelah,  come.     Come  to  the  field. 

Come  to  the  rice Come  from  the  West.     Come 

from  the  East.     From  the  throat  of  the  bird,  from  the  maw 

of  the  ape,   from  the  throat  of  the  elephant 

From  all  granaries  come.  O  rice  kelah,  come  to  the  rice."' 
There  is  reason  to  think  that  the  doctrine  of  the  spirits  of 
plants  lay  deep  in  the  intellectual  history  of  South-East 
Asia,  but  was  in  great  measure  superseded  under  Buddhist 
influence.  The  Buddhist  books  show  that  in  the  early  days 
of  their  religion,  it  was  matter  of  controversy  whether  trees 
had  souls,  and  therefore  whether  they  might  lawfully  be 
injured.  Orthodox  Buddhism  decided  against  the  tree- 
souls,  and  consequently  against  the  scruple  to  harm  them, 
declaring  trees  to  have  no   mind  nor  sentient  principle, 

'  Moerenhout.  '  Voy.  aiix  lies  du  Grand  Ocdan,'  vol.  i.  p.  430. 

'  St.  John,  '  Far  East,'  vol.  i.  p.  187. 

•  Mason,  '  Karens,'  in  '  Journ.  As.  Soc.  Benj^al,'  1865.  part  ii.  p.  202  ;  Cross 
in  'Journ.  Amer.  Oriental  Soc'  vol.  iv.  p.  3ti9.  See  comparison  of  Siamese 
and  Malay  ideas;  Low  in  'Journ.  lud.  Archip.'vol.  i.  p.  340, 


476 


ANIMISM. 


'     ," 


I  1? 


't 


though  admitting  that  certain  ('ewas  or  spirits  do  reside  in 
the  body  of  trees,  and  speak  from  within  them.  Buddhists 
also  relate  that  a  heterodox  sect  kept  up  the  early  doctrine 
of  the  actutil  animate  life  of  trees,  in  connexion  with  which 
may  be  remembered  Marco  Polo's  somewhat  doubtful  state- 
ment as  to  certain  austere  Indians  objecting  to  green  herbs 
for  such  a  reason,  and  some  other  passages  from  later 
writers.  Generally  speaking,  the  subject  of  the  spirits  of 
plants  is  an  obscure  one,  whether  from  the  lower  races  not 
having  defniite  opinions,  or  from  our  not  finding  it  easy  to 
trace  them.^  The  evidence  from  funeral  sacrifices,  so 
valuable  as  to  most  departments  of  early  psychology,  fails 
us  here,  from  plants  not  being  thought  suitable  to  send  for 
the  service  of  the  dead.  Yet,  as  we  shall  "■.ee  more  fully 
elsewhere,  there  are  two  topics  which  bear  closely  on  the 
matter.  On  the  one  hand,  the  doctrine  of  transmigration 
widely  and  clearly  recognises  the  idea  of  trees  or  smaller 
plants  being  animated  by  human  souls  ;  on  the  other,  the 
belief  in  tree-spirits  and  the  practice  of  tree-worship  involve 
notions  more  or  less  closely  coinciding  with  that  of  tree- 
souls,  as  when  the  classic  hamadryad  dies  with  her  tree,  or 
when  the  Talein  of  South-East  Asia,  considering  every  tree 
to  have  a  demon  or  spirit,  offers  prayers  before  he  cuts  one 
down. 

Thus  far  the  details  of  the  lower  animistic  philosophy  are 
not  very  unfamiliar  to  modern  students.  The  primitive 
view  of  the  souls  of  men  and  beasts,  as  asserted  or  acted  on 
in  the  lower  and  middle  levels  of  culture,  so  far  belongs  to 
current  civilized  thought,  that  those  who  hold  the  doctrine 
to  be  false,  and  the  practices  based  upon  it  futile,  can 
nevertheless  understand  and  sympathise  with  the  lower 
nations  to  whom  they  are  matters  of  the  most  sober  and 
serious  conviction.  Nor  is  even  the  notion  of  a  separable 
spirit  or  soul  as  the  cause  of  life  in  plants  too  incongruous 

•  Haidy,  '  Manual  of  Budhisni,' pp.  291,  443;  Bastian,  '  Oestl.  Asien/vol.  ii. 
p.  184  ;  Marco  Polo,  book  iii.  ch.  xxii  (coiupare  various  readings) ;  Meiiiurs, 
vol.  L  p.  2]  5 ;  vol.  iL  p.  799. 


3  reside  in 
Buddhists 
y  doctrine 
ffiih.  which 
jtful  state- 
;reen  herhs 
from  later 
;  spirits  of 
r  races  not 
ft  it  easy  to 
crifices,  so 
lology,  fails 
to  send  for 
;  more  fully 
3sely  on  the 
nsmigration 
1  or  smaller 
B  other,  the 
•ship  involve 
hat  of  tree- 
L  her  tree,  or 
ig  every  tree 
}  he  cuts  one 

lilosophy  are 
'he  primitive 
d  or  acted  on 
Far  belongs  to 
the  doctrine 
it  futile,  can 
th  the   lower 
3st  sober  and 
)f  a  separable 
o  incongruous 

lestl.  Asieii.'vol.ii. 
jadiugs) ;  Meinurs, 


ANIJIISM. 


477 


with  ordinary  ideas  to  be  readily  appreciable.  But  the 
theory  of  souls  in  the  lower  culture  stretclies  beyond  this 
limit,  to  take  in  a  conception  much  stranger  to  modern 
thought.  Certain  high  savage  races  distinctly  hold,  and  a 
large  proportion  of  other  savage  and  barbarian  races  make 
a  more  or  less  close  ai^proach  to,  a  theory  of  separable  and 
surviving  souls  or  spirits  belonging  to  stocks  and  stones, 
weapons,  boats,  food,  clothes,  ornaments,  and  other  objects 
whicli  to  us  are  not  merely  soulless  but  lifeless. 

Yet,  strange  as  such  a  notion  may  seem  to  us  at  first 
sight,  if  we  place  ourselves  by  an  effort  in  the  intellectual 
position  of  an  uncultured  tribe,  and  examine  the  theory  of 
object-souls  from  their  point  of  view,  we   shall  hardly  pro- 
nounce it  irrational.      In  discussing  the  origin    of  myth 
some  account  has  been  already  given  of  the  primitive  stage 
of  thought  in  which  perscmality  and  life  are  ascribed  not  to 
men  and  beasts  only,  but  to  things.     It  has  been  shown 
how  what  we  call  inanimate  objects — rivers,  stones,  trees, 
weapons,   and    so    forth— are    treated  as  living   intelligent 
beings,  talked  to,  propitiated,  punished  for  the  harm  they 
do.     Hume,  whose  "  Natural  History  of  Ileligion  "  is  per- 
haps more   than    any    other  work   the    source   of  modei-u 
opinions  as  to  the  development  of  religion,  connnents  on  tlie 
influence  of  this  personifying  stage   of  thought.     "  There 
is  an  universal  tendency  among  mankind  to   conceive  all 
beings  like  themselves,  and  to  transfer  to  every  -Object  those 
qualities  with  which  they  are  familiarly  ac(iu;unted,  and  of 

which  they  are  intimately  conscious The  nn- 

known  causes,  which  continally  employ  their  thought,  ai)pear- 
ing  always  in  the  same  aspect,  are  all  apprehended  to  he  of 
the  same  kind  or  species.  Nor  is  it  long  before  we  ascribe 
to  them  thought  and  reason,  and  passion,  and  sometimes 
even  the  limbs  and  figures  of  men,  in  order  to  bring  them 
nearer  to  a  resemblance  with  ourselves."  Auguste  Comte 
has  ventured  to  brhig  such  a  state  of  thought  under  terms 
of  strict  definition  in  his  conception  of  the  primary  mental 
condition  of  mankind — a  state  of  "pure   fetishism,    con- 


Vt-t  *mJ0>^mv^m^^-.m 


'!!■.    i'n: 


478 


ANIMISM, 


•'in 


stantly  characterized  by  the  free  and  direct  exercise  of  our 
primitive  tendency  to  conceive  all  external  bodies  soever, 
natural  or  artificial,  as  animated  by  a  life  essentially  analo- 
gous to  our  own,  with  mere  differences  of  intensity."  ^  Our 
comprehension  of  the  lower  stages  of  mental  culture 
depends  much  on  the  thoroughness  with  which  we  can 
appreciate  this  primitive,  childlike  conception,  and  in  this 
our  best  guide  may  be  the  memory  of  our  own  childish  days. 
He  who  recollects  when  there  was  still  personality  to  him 
in  posts  and  sticks,  chairs  and  toys,  may  well  understand 
how  the  infant  philosophy  of  mankind  could  extend  the 
notion  of  vitality  to  what  modern  science  only  recognises  as 
lifeless  things ;  thus  one  main  part  of  the  lower  animistic 
doctrine  as  to  souls  of  objects  is  accounted  for.  The  doc- 
trine requires  for  its  full  conception  of  a  soul  not  only  life, 
but  also  a  phantom  or  apparitional  spirit ;  this  develop- 
ment, however,  follows  without  difficulty,  for  the  evidence 
of  dreams  and  visions  applies  to  the  spirits  of  objects  in 
much  the  same  manner  as  to  human  ghosts.  Everyone 
who  has  seen  visions  while  light-headed  in  fever,  everyone 
who  has  ever  dreamt  a  dream,  has  seen  the  phantoms  of 
objects  as  well  as  of  persons.  How  then  can  we  charge  the 
savage  with  far-fetched  absurdity  for  taking  into  his  philo- 
sophy and  religion  an  opinion  which  rests  on  the  very  evi- 
dence of  his  senses  ?  The  notion  is  implicitly  recognised 
in  his  accounts  of  ghosts,  which  do  not  come  naked,  but 
clothed,  and  even  armed ;  of  course  there  must  be  spirits 
of  garments  and  weapons,  seeing  that  the  spirits  of  men 
come  bearing  them.  It  will  indeed  place  savage  philosophy 
in  no  unfavourable  light,  if  we  compare  this  extreme  ani- 
mistic development  of  it  with  the  popular  oi)inion  still  sur- 
viving in  civilized  countries,  as  to  ghosts  and  the  nature  of 
the  human  soul  as  connected  with  them.  When  the  ghost 
of  Hamlet's  father  appeared  armed  cap-a-pe, 

*  Hume,  'Nat,  Hist,  of  Rel,'sec.  ii. ;  Comte,  ' Philosophie  Positive, ' voL r. 
p.  80, 


iifl !  Il^ 


rcise  of  our 
dies  sodver, 
itially  analo- 
;ity.'*^     Our 
ital    culture 
lich  we   can 
and  in  this 
hildish  days, 
lality  to  him 
1  understand 
I  extend  the 
recognises  as 
jver  animistic 
»r.     The  doc- 
not  only  life, 
this  develop- 
the  evidence 
of  objects  in 
ts.     Everyone 
ever,  everyone 
!  phantoms  of 
we  charge  the 
into  his  philo- 
1  the  very  evi- 
itly  recognised 
me  naked,  hut 
iiust  be  spirits 
spirits  of  men 
rage  philosophy 
Ls  extreme  ani- 
piiiion  still  sur- 
id  the  nature  of 
Vhen  the  ghost 


phie  Positive,'  voL  T. 


AHIMISM. 

"  Such  was  the  very  armour  he  had  on, 
When  he  the  ambitious  Norway  combated." 


479 


And  thus  it  is  a  habitual  feature  of  the  ghost-stories  of  the 
civilized,  as  of  the  savage  world,  that  the  ghost  comes 
dressed,  and  even  dressed  in  well-known  clothing  worn  iu 
life.  Hearing  as  well  as  sight  testifies  to  the  phantoms  of 
objects :  the  clanking  of  f^hostly  chains  and  the  rustling  of 
ghostly  dresses  are  described  in  the  literature  of  appari- 
tions. Now  by  the  savage  theory,  according  to  which  the 
ghost  and  his  clothes  are  alike  real  and  objective,  and  by 
the  modern  scientific  theory,  according  to  which  both  ghost 
and  garment  are  alike  imaginary  and  subjective,  the  tacts  of 
apparitions  are  rationally  met.  But  the  modern  vulgar  who 
ignore  or  repudiate  the  notion  of  ghosts  of  things,  while 
retaining  the  notion  of  ghosts  of  persons,  bave  fallen  into  a 
hybrid  state  of  opinion  which  has  neither  the  logic  of  the 
savage  nor  of  the  civilized  philosopher. 

Among  the  lower  races  of  mankind,  three  have  been  ob- 
served to  hold  most  explicitly  and  distinctly  the  doctrine  of 
object-souls.  These  are  the  Algonquin  tribes,  extending 
over  a  great  district  of  North  America,  the  islanders 
of  the  Fijian  group,  and  the  Karens  of  Birmah.  Among 
the  Indians  of  North  America,  Father  Charlevoix  wrote, 
souls  are,  as  it  were,  the  shadows  and  animated  images  of 
the  body,  and  it  is  by  a  consequence  of  this  princii)le  that 
they  believe  everything  to  be  animate  in  the  universe.  This 
missionary  was  especially  conversant  with  the  Algonquins, 
and  it  was  among  one  of  their  tribes,  the  Ojibwas,  that 
Keating  noticed  the  opinion  that  not  only  men  and  beasts 
have  souls,  but  inorganic  things,  sujh  as  kettles,  &c.,  have 
in  them  a  similar  essence.  In  the  same  district  Father  Le 
Jeune  had  described,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  belief 
that  the  souls,  not  only  of  men  and  animals,  but  of  hatchets 
and  kettles,  had  to  cross  the  water  to  the  Great  Village,  out 
where  the  sun  sets.'     In  interesting  correspondence  with 

'  Charlevoix,  vol.  vi.  p.  74;  Keating,  'Long's  Exp.'  vol.  iL  p.  154;  J.e 


48(» 


ANIMISM. 


l!      V 


pm 


this  quaint  tli()U!_,'ht  is  Mariner's  description  of  the  Fiji  doc- 
trine— ''If  an  animal  or  a  plant  die,  its  soul  immediatclv 
goes  to  Bolotoo  ;  if  a  stone  or  any  other  substance  is 
broken,  immortality  is  equally  its  reward ;  nay,  artificial 
bodies  have  equal  good  luck  with  men,  and  hogs,  and  j'ams. 
If  an  axe  or  a  chisel  is  worn  out  or  broken  up,  away  flies  its 
soul  for  the  service  of  the  gods.  If  a  house  is  taken  down 
or  any  way  destroyed,  its  immortal  part  will  find  a  situation 
on  the  plains  of  Bolotoo;  and,  to  confirm  this  doctrine, 
the  Fiji  people  can  show  you  a  sort  of  natural  well,  or  deep 
hole  in  the  ground,  atone  of  their  islands,  across  the  bottom 
of  which  runs  a  stream  of  water,  in  which  you  may  clearly 
perceive  the  souls  of  men  and  women,  beasts  and  plants,  of 
stocks  and  stones,  canoes  and  houses,  and  of  all  the  broken 
utensils  of  this  frail  world,  swimming,  or  rather  tumbling 
along  one  over  the  other  pell-mell  into  the  regions  of  im- 
mortality." A  full  generation  later,  the  Rev.  Thomas 
Williams,  while  remarking  that  the  escape  of  brutes  and 
lifeless  substances  to  the  spirit-land  of  jNIbulu  does  not  re- 
ceive universal  credit  among  tlio  Fijians,  nevertheless  con- 
firms the  older  account  of  it : — "  Those  who  profess  to  have 
seen  the  souls  of  canoes,  houses,  plants,  pots,  or  any  artifi- 
cial bodies,  swimming  with  other  relics  of  this  frail  world 
on  the  stream  of  the  Kauvandra  well,  which  bears  them 
into  the  regions  of  immortality,  believe  this  doctrine  as  a 
matter  of  course  ;  and  so  do  those  who  have  seen  the  foot- 
marks left  about  the  same  well  by  the  ghosts  of  dogs,  pigs, 
&c."  ^  The  theory  among  the  Karens  is  stated  by  the  Rev. 
E.  B.  Cross,  as  follows  : — "  Every  object  is  supposed  to 
have  its 'kelah.*  Axes  and  knives,  as  well  as  trees  and 
plants,  are  supposed  to  have  their  separate  *  kelahs.' "  **  The 
Karen,  with  his  axe  and  cleaver,  may  build  his  house,  cut 
his  rice,  and  conduct  his  affairs,  after  death  as  before."^ 

Jeune,  •  Nouvelle  France,'  p.  69  ;  also  Waitz,  vol.  iii.  p.  199  ;  Grogg,  '  Com- 
merce of  Prairies,'  vol.  ii.  p.  244  ;  see  Addison's  No.  56  of  the  'Spectator.* 

>  Mariner,  'Tonga  Is.'  vol.  ii.  p.  129;  Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  i.  p.  242. 
Similar  ideas  in  Taliiti,  Cook's  3id  Voy.  vol.  ii.  p.  166. 

2  Cross,  1.  c.  p.  309,  313  ;  Mason,  1.  c.  p.  202.  Compare  Meiners,  vol.  i. 
p.  144;  Gastrin,  'Finn.  Myth.' pp.  161  3. 


i'il: 


fiiiii 


ANIMISM, 


481 


lie  Fiji  doc- 
immedifttolv 

lubstance   is 
ay,  artificial 
s,  and  yams, 
away  flies  \i^ 
taken  down 
id  a  situation 
his  doctrine, 
well,  or  deep 
iss  the  bottom 
Li  may  clearly 
and  phmts,  of 
all  the  broken 
ther  tumbling 
regions  of  im- 
Kev.  Thomas 
of  brutes  and 

I  does  not  re- 
vertheless  con- 
profess  to  have 
^,  or  any  artifi- 
Lhis  frail  world 
ch  bears  them 

doctrine  as  a 

B  seen  the  foot- 

s  of  dogs,  pigs, 

ted  by  the  Rev. 

is  supposed  to 

II  as  trees  and 
celahs.'"  "The 

his  house,  cut 
as  before.'"* 
199  ;  Gvogg,  •  Com- 
3f  the  'Spectator.' 
iji,'  vol.  i.   p.  242. 

pare  Meiners,  vol.  i. 


As  so  man}'  races  perform  funeral  sacrifices  of  men  and 
animals,  in  order  to  dispatch  their  souls  for  the  service  of 
the  soul  of  the  deceased,  so  tribes  wlio  hold  tliis  doctrine  of 
object-souls  very  rationally  sacrifice  objects,  in  order  to 
transmit  these  souls.  Among  the  Algonquin  tribes,  tlic 
sacrifice  of  objects  for  the  dead  was  a  hahituiil  rite,  as  when 
we  read  of  a  warrior's  corpse  being  buried  with  musket  and 
war-club,  calumet  and  war-paint,  a  public  address  bein" 
made  to  the  body  at  burial  concerning  liis  future  puth, 
while  in  like  manner  a  woman  would  be  buried  with  lior 
paddle  and  kettle,  and  the  carrying-strap  for  the  everlasting 
burden  of  her  heavily-laden  life.  That  the  purpose  of  such 
offerings  is  the  transmission  of  the  object's  spirit  or  plinntom 
to  the  possession  of  the  man's  is  explicitly  stated  as  early 
as  1G23  by  Father  Lallemant ;  when  the  Indians  buried 
kettles,  furs,  &c.,  with  the  dead,  they  said  that  the  bodies 
of  the  things  renmiucd,  but  their  souls  went  to  the  dead  who 
used  them.  The  whole  idea  is  graphically  illustrated  in 
the  following  Ojibwa  tradition  or  myth.  Gitchi  Gauzini 
was  a  chief  who  lived  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Superior,  and 
once,  after  a  few  days'  illness,  he  seemed  to  die.  He  hsul 
been  a  skilful  hunter,  and  had  desired  that  a  fine  gun  which 
he  possessed  should  be  buried  with  him  when  he  died.  But 
some  of  his  friends  not  thinking  him  really  dead,  his  body 
was  not  buried  ;  his  widow  watched  him  for  four  days,  he 
came  back  to  life,  and  told  his  story.  After  death,  he  snid, 
his  ghost  travelled  on  the  broad  road  of  the  dead  townrd 
the  happy  land,  passing  over  great  plains  of  luxuriant 
herbage,  seeing  beautiful  groves,  and  hearing  the  songs  of 
innumerable  birds,  till  at  last,  from  the  summit  of  a  hill,  ho 
caught  sight  of  the  distant  city  of  the  dead,  far  across  an 
intermediate  space,  partly  veiled  in  mist,  and  spangled  with 
glittering  lakes  and  streams.  He  came  in  view  of  herds  of 
stately  deer,  and  moose,  and  other  game,  which  with  little 
fear  walked  near  his  path.  But  he  had  no  gun,  and  re- 
membering how  he  had  requested  his  friends  to  put  his  gun 
in  his  grave,  he  turned  back  to  go  and  fetch  it.     Then   lie 

VOL.  I. 


I  I 


482 


ANIMISM. 


i:' 


/  ■;: 


Mii   i  it.j.i/ 

SiifM  '11   I.e. ill. 


met  face  to  face  the  train  of  ineii,  women,  and  chililrei  aIiu 
were  travelling  toward  the  city  of  the  dead.  They  were 
hcnvily  laden  with  guns,  pipes,  kettles,  meats,  and  other 
articles;  women  were  carrying  basket-work  and  pai  ited 
paddles,  and  little  boys  had  thtir  ornamented  clubs  an<I 
their  bows  and  arrows,  the  presents  of  their  friends.  Re- 
fusing a  gun  which  an  overburdened  traveller  offered  liim, 
the  ghost  of  Gitchi  Gauzini  travelled  back  in  quest  of  his 
own,  and  at  last  reached  the  place  where  he  had  died. 
There  he  could  see  only  a  great  fire  before  and  around  him, 
and  finding  the  fiames  barring  his  passage  on  every  side,  he 
made  a  desperate  leap  through,  and  awoke  from  his  trance. 
.Having  concluded  his  story,  he  gave  his  auditors  this 
counsel,  that  they  should  no  longer  deposit  so  many 
burdensome  things  with  the  dead,  delaying  them  on  their 
journey  to  the  place  of  repose,  so  that  almost  everyone  he 
met  complained  bitterly.  It  would  be  wiser,  he  said,  oniy 
to  put  such  things  in  the  grave  as  tlie  deceased  was  par- 
ticularly attached  to,  or  made  a  formal  request  to  have 
deposited  with  him.^ 

With  purpose  no  less  distinct,  when  a  dead  Fijian  chief 
is  laid  out  oiled  and  painted  and  dressed  as  in  life,  a  heavy 
club  is  placed  ready  near  his  right  hand,  which  holds  one  or 
more  of  tho  much-prized  carved  "  whale's  tooth  "  orna- 
ments. Tho  club  is  to  serve  for  defence  against  the 
adversaries  who  await  his  soul  on  the  road  to  Mbulu,  seek- 
ing to  slay  and  eut  him.  We  hear  of  a  Fijian  taking  a 
(dub  f:\..  1  a  companion's  grave,  and  remarking  in  explana- 
tion to  a  missionary  who  stood  by,  **  The  ghost  of  the  club 
has  gone  with  him."  The  purpose  of  the  whale's  tooth  is 
this  ;  on  the  road  to  the  land  of  the  dead,  near  the  solitary 
hill  of  Takiveleyawa,  there  stands  a  ghostly  pandanus-tree, 
and  the  spirit  of  the  dead  man  is  to  throw  the  spirit  of  the 
whale's  tooth  at  this  tree,  having  struck  which  he  is  to 
ascend  the  hill  and  await  the  coming  of  the  spirits  of  his 

'  Schoolcraft,  '  Indian  Tribes,'  part  ii.  p.  68  ;  '  Algic  Res.'  vol.  ii.  p.  128  ; 
Lalleiuant  in  '£el.  des  J^suites  dans  la  Nouvelle  France,'  1626,  p.  8. 


i-'l: 


ANIMISM. 


483 


1(1  chililre)    aIju 
d.     They  were 
;nts,  and  other 
•k   and  pai'ited 
Qted  clubs  and 
r  friends.     Be- 
er offered  him, 
in  quest  of  his 
e  he  had  died, 
md  around  him, 
n  every  side,  he 
from  his  trance. 
,s   auditors  this 
jposit   80    many 
r  them  on  their 
lost  everyone  he 
er,  he  said,  oniy 
jceased  was  par- 
request   to  have 

« 

lead  Fijian  chief 
s  in  life,  a  heavy 
lich  holds  one  or 
j's  tooth  "  orna- 
nee  against  the 
,  to  Mbulu,  seek- 

Fijian  taking  a 
rking  in  explana- 
ghost  of  the  club 

whale's  tooth  is 

near  the  solitary 
ly  pandanus-tree, 

the  spirit  of  the 
:  which  he  is  to 
the  spirits  of  his 

c  Res.'  vol  ii.  p.  128  ; 
e,'  1626,  p.  8. 


. 


Btningled  wives.^  The  funeral  rites  of  the  T-'arens  complete 
the  present  group.  They  kept  up  what  seems  a  cleur  sur- 
vival from  actual  human  and  animal  sacrifice,  fastening  up 
near  an  important  person's  grave  a  slave  and  a  pony  ;  these 
invariably  released  themselves,  and  the  slave  becume  hence- 
forth a  free  man.  Moreover,  the  practice  of  i)lacing  food, 
implements  and  utensils,  and  valunMes  of  gold  and  silver, 
near  the  remains  of  the  deceased,  was  general  among  them,^ 
Now  the  sacrifice  of  property  for  the  dead  is  one  of  tli" 
great  religious  rites  of  the  world;  are  we  then  juef;ie(l  iu 
asserting  that  all  men  who  abandon  or  destroy  proptTty  as 
a  funeral  ceremony  believe  the  articles  to  Inive  si)irits,  wliich 
spirits  are  transmitted  to  the  deceased?  Not  so;  it  is 
notorious  that  there  are  people  who  recognize  no  such  theory, 
but  who  nevertheless  deposit  olferings  with  the  dead.  Affec- 
tionate fanc}'  or  symbolism,  a  horror  of  the  association  of 
death  leading  the  survivors  to  get  rid  of  anything  that  even 
su;j;gests  the  dreadful  thought,  a  desire  to  abandon  the  dead 
man's  property,  an  idea  that  the  hovering  ghost  may  take 
pleasure  in  or  make  use  of  the  gifts  left  for  him,  all  these 
are  or  may  be  efficient  motives.'^     Yet,  having  made  full 

»  Williams,  'Fiji,'  vol.  L  pp.  188,  243,  246  ;  Alger,  p.  82  ;  Seemann,  '  Viti,' 
p.  229, 

'  *  Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  new  series,  vol,  ii.  p.  421. 

•  For  some  cases  in  which  horror  or  atmogation  are  nssi<Tned  as  motives  for 
abauduninent  of  the  dead  man's  property,  see  Humboldt  and  Bunphiiid, 
vol.  V.  p.  626  ;  Dalton  in  'Journ.  As.  Soc.  Bengal,'  18(J6,  part  ii.  p.  lUl,  etc.  ; 
Earl,  'Papuans,' p.  108  ;  Callaway,  '  Rel.  of  Amazulu,' p.  13;  Egede,  'Green- 
land,' p.  151;  Cranz,  p.  301  ;  Loskiel,  'Ind.  N.  A.'  part  i.  p.  G4,  but  see 
p.  76.  The  destruction  or  abandonment  of  the  wliolo  property  of  the  dead 
may  plausibly,  whether  justly  or  not,  be  explained  by  horror  or  abneg.itioii ; 
but  tliese  motives  do  not  generally  apply  to  cases  wliere  only  part  of  the  pro- 
perty is  sacrificed,  or  new  objects  are  ])Vovided  expressly,  and  Iiere  the  service 
of  the  dead  seems  the  reasonable  motive.  Thus,  at  the  funeral  of  a  Gato 
girl,  earthen  vessels  were  broken  as  they  were  thrown  in  aliove  the  buried 
a.shes.  "They  said,  the  spirit  of  tlie  girl  would  not  benefit  by  them  if  tliey 
were  given  unbroken,  but  for  her  the  fragments  would  unite  again."  (Dalton, 
•Descriptive  Ethnology  of  Bengal,'  p.  67  )  The  mere  fact  of  breaking  or 
destruction  of  objects  at  funerals  does  not  carry  its  own  explanation,  tor  it 
is  equally  applicable  to  sentimental  abandonment  and  to  practical  transmission 
of  the  spirit  of  the  object,  as  a  man  is  killed  to  liberate  his  soul.     For  good 

I  I  2 


4.S4. 


ANIMISM. 


!('i 


•■\ 


:•;■-. 


Hllowance  for  all  this,  we  sliull  jet  find  reason  to  judge  thai 
many  other  peoj)les,  though  they  may  never  have  stated  the 
theory  of  object-souls  in  the  same  explicit  waj'  as  the 
Algonquins,  Fijinns,  and  Karens,  have  recognized  it  with 
more  or  less  distinctness.  It  has  given  me  the  more  con- 
fidence in  this  opinion  to  find  it  held,  under  proper  reserva- 
tion, bj'  Mr.  W.  R.  Alger,  an  American  investigator,  who 
in  a  treatise  entitled  "  A  Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of 
a  Future  Life  "  has  discussed  the  ethnography  of  his  sub- 
ject with  remarkable  learning  and  sagacity.  *'  The  barbarian 
brain,"  he  writes,  "  seems  to  have  been  generall}'  impreg- 
nated wilh  the  feeling  that  every  thing  else  has  a  ghost  as 
well  as  man.  .  .  .  The  custom  of  burning  or  bu/ying  things 
with  the  dead  probably  arose,  in  some  cases  at  least,  from 
the  supposition  that  every  object  has  its  niane.^.^^  ^  It  will 
be  desirable  briefly  to  examine  further  the  subject  of  fune^-al 
oflerings,  as  bearing  on  this  interesting  question  of  early 
pj'scholog}'. 

A  wide  survey  of  funeral  sacrifices  over  the  world  will 
plainly  show  one  of  their  most  usual  motives  to  be  a  more 

cases  of  the  breaking  of  vessels  and  utensils  given  to  the  dead,  see  Mourn. 
Ind.  iSicliii).'  vol.  i.  ])  325  (Jlintira) ;  Grey,  'Australia.'  vol.  i.  p.  3L'2  ;  G.  F. 
M"ore,  'Vooiih.  W.  Austndiiu' p.  LS  (Austridi;ins)  ;  I\Iarkham  in  '  Tr.  F.th. 
Soc'  vol.  iii.  p.  18S  (Ticunas)  ;  fit.  John,  v-d.  i.  p.  63  (Dayaks);  Ellis, 
*  Madagiscar,'  vol  i.  p.  25i  ;  Schoolcraft.  '  Indian  Trihes,'  part  i.  p.  84  i  Ap]ia- 
lachicola  ;  D.  Wilson,  '  Prehi.storic  iLiii,  vol.  ii.  p.  19(J  (N.  A.  I.  and  ancient 
gr.ives  in  Eii;;huid).  Cases  of  formal  sacrifice  wliere  olijects  are  offered  to  the 
dead  and  taken  away  ai^ain,  are  s^inerally doubtful  as  to  motive  ;  see  Sfix  and 
Martins,  vol.  i.  p.  383;  Alnrtiu.s,  vol,  i.  p.  485  Brazilian  Tribes);  Moll'at, 
'  S.  Africa,'  p.  308  (liechuanas)  ;  'Jonrn.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  iii.  ]>.  149 
(Kayans). 

Alger,  'Future  Life,'  ]).  81.  He  treats,  however  (p.  76),  as  intentionally 
symbolic  the  lite  of  the  Winneluigos,  who  light  fires  on  the  grave  to  provide 
iiiglit  at'tiT  niglit  camii-lires  for  the  .soul  on  its  fur  jmirney  (Schoolcial't,  '  Ind. 
'I  r.'  vol.  iv.  p.  55  ;  the  idea  is  introduced  in  Li)ngfellr)w's  'Hiawatlia,'  xix.). 
I  a.mrewith  Dr.  Rrinton  ('Myths  of  New  World,' p.  '241)  ti.at  to  look  for 
recondite  symbolic  meaning  in  these  simjde  childi.sh  rites  is  unreasonable. 
There  was  a  similar  Aztec  rite  (Clavigero,  vol.  ii.  p.  94).  The  Mintira  light 
fires  on  the  grave  fcr  the  .spirit  to  warm  it.stdf  at  (' Journ.  Ind.  Archip. 'vid.  i. 
p.  i-25*,  seo  p.  271,  and  conijiare  iMartius,  vol.  i.  p.  491).  So  Australians 
will  light  a  fire  near  their  camp  at  night  for  the  ghost  of  some  lately  dead 
relative  to  sit  by  (Millett,  '.\u.-,ti'alian  Parsomige,'  p.  76). 


ANIMISM. 


485 


on  to  judge  that 
■  have  stated  the 
icit  way  as  the 
cognized  it  with 
le  the  more  con- 
*  proper  reserva- 
nvestigator,  who 
f  the  Doctrine  of 
apliy  of  his  sub- 
"  The  barbarian 
enerally  impreg- 
e  has  a  ghost  as 
)r  bujying  things 
ies  at  least,  from 
lanex"  ^  It  will 
(Ubject  of  fune^'al 
uestion  of  early 

f  the  world  will 
ves  to  be  a  more 

the  dead,  see  '.Tonrn. 
'  vol.  i.  p.  3-'2  ;  G.  F. 
ixikham  in  '  Tr.  Kth. 
68  (Daynks);  Ellis, 
3,'  part  i.  p.  84(Ap]ia- 
1  (N.  A.  I.  and  ancient 
ects  are  offered  to  tlie 
motive  ;  see  Spix  and 
lian  Tribes) ;  Jlollat, 
lip.'  vol.   iii.    ]).    14& 

I.  76),  as  iiitentionally 
the  grave  to  provide 
ey  (Sclioolciaft,  '  hid. 
iv's  '  Hiiiwatlia,'  xix.). 
•241)  that  to  look  for 
rites  is  unreasonable. 
).  The  Mintira  light 
1.  Ind.  An.'hip. '  vol.  i. 
191).  So  Australians 
t  of  some  lately  ilead 
). 


or  less  defined  notion  of  benefiting  the  deceased,  whether 
out  of  kindness  to  him  or  from  {'ear  of  his  displeasure.  Plow 
such  an  intention  may  have  taken  this  practical  sliape  we  can 
perhaps  vaguely  guess,  famihar  as  we  are  with  a  state  of  mind 
out  of  which  funeral  sacrifices  could  naturally  have  sprung. 
The  man  is  dead,  but  it  is  still  possible  to  fancy  him  jJive, 
to  take  his  cold  hand,  to  speak  to  him,  to  place'his  cliair  at 
the  table,  to  bury  suggestive  mementos  in  his  cofiin,  to 
throw  flowers  into  his  grave,  to  hang  wreatlis  of  everlastings 
on  his  tomb.     The  Cid  may  be  set  on  Babieca  with  his 
sword  Tizona  in  his  hand,  and  carried  out  to  do  battle  as  of 
old  against  the  unbeliever ;  the  dead  king's  meal  may  be 
carried  in  to  him  in  state,  although  the  chamberlain  nnist 
announce  that  the  king  does  not  dine  to-dav.     Such  child- 
like ignoring  of  death,  such  childlike  make-believe  that  tlie 
dead  can  still  do  as  heretofore,  may  well  have  led  the  savage 
to  bury  with  his  kinsman  the  weapons,  clothes,  and  orna- 
ments that  he  used  in  hfe,  to  try  to  feed  the  corpse,  to  put 
a  cigar  in  the  mouth  of  the  skull  before  its  final  burial,  to 
lay  playthings  in  the  infant's  grave.     But  one  thought  be- 
yond would  carry  this  dim  blind  fancy  into  the  ra"i-o  of 
logical  reasoning.     Granted  that  the  nian  is  dead  and  his 
soul  gone  out  of  him,  then  the  way  to  provide  that  departed 
soul  with  food  or  clothes  or  weapons  is  to  bury  or  burn  them 
with  the  body,  for  whatever  happens  to  the  man  may  be 
taken  to  happen  to  the  objects  that  lie  beside  him  and  share 
his  fate,  while  the  precise  way  in  which  the  transmission 
takes  place  may  be  left  undecided.     It  is  possible  that  the 
funeral  sacrifice  customary  among  mankind  mayliave  rested 
at  first,  and  may  to  some  extent  still  re:it,  on  vague  thoughts 
and  imaginations  like   these,   as  yet    fitted   into  no  inore 
definite  and  elaborate  philosophic  theory. 

There  are,  however,  two  great  groups  of  cases  of  funeral 
sacrifice,  which  so  logically  lead  up  to  or  involve  the  notion 
of  souls  or  spirits  of  objects,  that  the  sacrificer  himself 
could  hardly  answer  otherwise  a  point-blank  question  as  to 
their  meaning.     The  first  group  is  that  in  which  those  who 


4S6 


ANIMISM. 


>l       i>:;- 


sacrifice  men  and  beasts  with  the  intention  of  conveying 
their  souls  to  the  other  world,  also  sacrifice  lift^less  things 
indiscriminately  with  them.  The  second  group  is  that  in 
which  the  phantoms  of  the  objects  sacrificed  are  traced  dis- 
tinctly into  the  possession  of  the  human  phantom. 

The  Ciiribs,  holding  that  after  decease  man's  soul  found 
its  way  to  the  land  of  the  dead,  sacrificed  slaves  on  a  chief's 
grave  to  serve  him  in  the  new  lite,  and  for  the  same  purpose 
buried  dogs  with  him,  and  also  weapons.^  The  Guinea 
negroes,  at  the  funeral  of  a  great  man,  killed  several  wives 
and  slaves  to  serve  him  in  the  other  world,  and  put  fine 
clothes,  gold  fetishes,  coral,  beads,  and  other  valuables,  into 
the  coffin,  to  be  used  there  too.^  "When  the  New  Zealand 
chief  had  slaves  killed  at  his  death  for  his  service,  and  the 
mourning  family  gave  his  chief  widow  a  rope  to  hang  her- 
self with  in  the  woods  and  so  rejoin  her  husband,^  it  is  not 
easy  to  discern  here  a  motive  dilTerent  from  that  which 
induced  them  at  the  same  time  to  provide  the  dead  man  also 
with  his  weapons.  Nor  can  an  intellectual  line  well  be 
drawn  between  the  intentions  with  which  the  Tunguz  has 
buried  with  him  his  horse,  his  bow  and  arrows,  his  smoking 
apparatus  and  kettle.  In  the  typical  description  whicli 
Herodotus  gives  of  the  funeral  of  the  ancient  Scythian 
chiefs,  the  miscellaneous  contents  of  the  burial-mound, 
the  strangled  wife  and  household  servants,  the  horses,  the 
choice  articles  of  property,  the  golden  vessels,  fairly  represent 
the  indiscriminate  purpose  Avhich  actuated  the  barbaric 
sacrifice  of  creatures  and  things.*  So  in  old  Europe,  the 
warrior  with  his  sword  and  spear,  the  horse  with  the  saddle, 
the  hunter's  hound  and  hawk  and  his  bow  and  arrow,  the 
wife  with  her  gay  clothes  and  jewels,  lie  together  in  the 
burial-mound.  Their  common  purpose  has  become  (me  of 
the  most  undisputed  inferences  of  Archaeology. 

•  J.  G.  Miiller,  '  Amer.  UiTclig.'  p.  222,  see  420. 

'  Bosnian,  '  Guinea,'  in  Pinkertou,  vol.  xvi.  p.  430. 

»  Polack,  'M.  of  New  Zuulaudcrs,' vol.  ii.  i)p.  66,  78,  116,  127. 

*  Georgi,  '  Iluss.  E.'  vol.  i.  p.  206  ;  Ilerodot.  iv.  71,  see  note  in  Rawlinsoa'i 
Tr.  etc.,  etc. 


ANIMISM. 


487 


of  conveying 
lifoless  things 
oup  is  that  in 
are  traced  dis- 
ntom. 

an's  soul  found 
ves  on  a  chief's  . 
Lc  same  purpose 
I     The  Guinea 
ed  several  wives 
Id,  and  put  fine 
r  valuables,  into 
lie  New  Zealand 
1  service,  and  the 
ope  to  hang  her- 
ushand,3  it  is  not 
Irom  that  which 
the  dead  man  also 
tual  line  weU  he 
the  Tunguz  has 
rows,  his  smoking 
description  which 
ancient  Scythian 
;he   hurial-mound, 
s,  the  horses,  the 
els,  fairly  represent 
ated   the   barbaric 
n  old  Europe,  the 
•se  with  the  saddle, 
bow  and  arrow,  the 
lie  together  in  the 
has  become  one  of 
3ology. 

0. 

78,  116,  127.       ,.        , 
1,  seenotoinRawlmsoai 


As  for  what  becomes  of  the  objects  sacrifu'ed  for  the  dcjul, 
there  are  on  record  tlie  most  distinct  statements  taken  from 
the  sacrificers  themselves.  Althougli  the  objects  rot  in  the 
grave  or  are  consumed  on  the  pile,  tliey  nevertludess  come 
in  some  way  into  the  possession  of  the  disembodied  souls 
they  are  intended  for.  Not  the  material  things  themselves, 
but  phantasmal  sliapes  corresponding  to  tbem,  are  carried 
by  the  souls  of  the  dead  on  their  far  journey  beyond  the 
grave,  or  are  used  in  the  world  of  spirits;  w);ile  sometimes 
the  phantoms  of  the  dead  appear  to  the  liNing,  bearing 
property  which  they  have  received  by  sacrifice,  or  demand- 
ing something  that  has  been  witlilield.  The  Avvtralian  will 
take  his  weapons  with  him  to  his  paradise.*  A  ^asmanian, 
asked  the  reason  of  a  spear  being  deposited  in  h  native's 
grave,  replied  "To  fight  witli  wlien  he  is  asleep.  '^  Many 
Greenlanders  thought  that  the  kayak  and  arrows  and  tools 
laid  by  a  man's  grave,  the  knife  and  sewing  implemenis  laid 
!)}'•  a  woman's,  would  be  used  in  the  next  world.''  The 
instruments  buried  with  the  Sioux  are  for  him  to  make  a 
living  with  hereafter ;  the  paints  provided  for  the  dead 
Iroquois  were  to  enable  him  to  api)ear  decently  in  the  <  'her 
world.*  The  Aztec's  water-bottle  was  to  serve  him  on  v,ho 
journey  to  Mictlan,  the  land  of  the  dead  ;  the  bonfire  of 
garments  and  baskets  and  spoils  of  war  was  hitended  to  send 
them  with  him,  and  somehow  to  protect  him  against  the 
bitter  wind ;  the  offerings  to  the  warrior's  manes  on  earth 
would  reach  him  on  the  heavenly  plains.^  Among  the  old 
Peruvians,  a  dead  prince's  wives  would  hang  themselves  in 
order  to  continue  in  his  S(>rvice,  and  many  of  his  attendants 
would  be  buried  in  his  fields  or  places  of  favourite  resoi't, 
in  order  that  his  soul,  passing  through  those  places,  might 

'  Oldfieldin  'Tr.  Etli.  Soc'  vol.  iii.  pp.  2-lS,  2ir,. 

•  Himwick,  'Tn.sinaiiiiuis,' p.  1)7. 

'  (."nuiz,  'Groiilaiid,'  pp.  20;,  301. 

•»  Schoolcinft,  'Imliiin  Till. us,' pint  iv.  pp.  55,  65;  J.  G.  Mlillcr,  'Amer. 
Urrcl.'  pp.  88,  -^87. 

»  SaluvfTun,  book  iii.  A  pp.  in  Kingsboroiij,'li,  'Aiiticpiities  of  Mexico,'  vol 
vii.  ;  CIavi;j;oro,  vol.  ii.  p.  di  ;  Brassour,  vol.  iii.  pp.  4i>7,  669. 


4b« 


ANIMISM. 


^f 


1^ 


'   '  ■  ;  'li 


take  their  souls  along  with  him  for  future  service.  In  per- 
fect consistency  with  these  strong  animistic  notions,  the 
Peruvians  declared  that  their  reason  for  sacrifice  of  property 
to  the  dead  was  that  they  "  have  seen,  or  thought  they  saw, 
those  who  had  long  been  dead  walking,  adorned  with  the 
things  that  were  buried  with  them,  and  accompanied  by 
their  wives  who  had  been  buried  alive."  ^ 

As  definite  an  imi)lication  of  the  spirit  or  phantom  of  an 
object  appears  in  a  recent  account  from  Madagascar,  where 
things  are  buried  to  become  in  some  waj' useful  to  the  dead. 
When  King  Radama  died,  it  was  reported  and  firmly 
believed  that  his  ghost  was  seen  one  night  in  the  garden  of 
his  country  seat,  dressed  in  one  of  the  uniforms  which  had 
been  buried  with  him,  and  riding  one  of  the  best  horses 
killed  opposite  his  tomb.^  Turanian  tribes  of  North  Asia 
avow  that  the  motive  of  their  funeral  offerings  of  horses  and 
sledges,  clothes  and  axes  and  kettles,  flint  and  steel  and 
tinder,  meat  and  butter,  is  to  provide  the  dead  for  his 
journej^  to  the  land  of  souls,  and  for  his  life  there.^  Among 
the  Esths  of  Northern  Europe,  the  dead  starts  properly 
equipped  on  his  ghostlj'  journey  with  needle  and  thread, 
hairbrush  and  soap,  bread  and  brand}'  and  coin  ;  a  toy,  if  it 
is  a  child.  And  so  full  a  consciousness  of  practical  meaning 
survived  till  lately,  that  now  and  then  a  soul  would  come  back 
at  night  to  reproach  its  relations  with  not  having  provided 
properl}'  for  it,  but  left  it  in  distress.*  To  turn  from  these 
now  Europeanized  Tatars  to  a  rude  race  of  the  Eastern 
Archipelago,  among  the  Orang  Binua  of  Sambawa  there 
prevails  this  curious  law  of  inheritance  ;  not  only  does  each 
surviving  relative,  father,  mother,  son,  brother,  and  so  forth, 
take  his  or  her  proper  share,  but  the  deceased  inherits  one 

'  Cieza  de  Leon,  p.  161  ;  Kivero  and  Tschudi,  '  Peruvian  Antiquities,'  pp. 
186,  -200. 

^  Ellis,  'Madagascar,'  vol,  1.  pp.  254,  429 ;  see  Flacourt,  p.  60. 

8  Castr^n,  '  Fiuu.  Myth  '  p.  118  ;  J.  Billings,  '  Exp.  to  N.  Russia,'  p.  129 ; 
Bee  Samoiedia'  in  Pinkeiton,  vol.  i.  p.  532,  and  Leeuis,  '  Lapland,' ibid., 
p.  484. 

*  Boeder,  '£hstea  Gebraiiche,'  p.  69. 


i  / 


ANIMISM. 


489 


;.  In  per- 
otions,  the 
of  property 
it  they  saw, 
3d  with  the 
mpanied  by 

antoni  of  an 
ascar,  where 
to  the  dead, 
and  firmly 
the  garden  of 
ns  which  had 
3  best  horses 
)f  North  Asia 
i  of  horses  and 
and  steel  and 
dead  for  his 
lere.''     Among 
,tarts  properly 
le  and  thread, 
)in  ;  a  toy,  if  it 
actical  meaning 
ould  come  back 
laving  provided 
turn  from  these 
of  the  Eastern 
Sambawa  there 
.  only  does  each 
lier,  and  so  forth, 
ised  inherits  one 

vian  Antiquities,'  pp. 

urt,  p.  60' 

to  N.Uussia.'p.  129; 

eui3,  'Lai.laud,'ibid.. 


share  from  himself,  which  is  devoted  to  his  use  by  eating  the 
animals  at  the  funeral  feast,  burning  everything  else  th.it  will 
burn,  and  burying  the  remainder.^  In  Cochin  China,  the 
common  people  object  to  celebrating  their  feast  of  the  dead 
on  the  same  day  with  the  upper  classes,  for  this  excellent 
reason,  that  the  aristocratic  souls  niiglit  make  the  ser- 
vant souls  carry  home  their  presents  for  them.  These 
l)eople  employ  all  the  resources  of  their  civilization  to  per- 
form with  the  more  lavish  extravagance  the  savitye  fmural 
sacrifices.  Here  are  details  from  an  account  publish*  d  in 
1849  of  the  funeral  of  a  late  king  of  Cochin  China.  "  When 
the  corpse  of  Thien  Tri  was  deposited  in  the  collin,  there 
were  also  deposited  in  it  many  things  for  the  use  of  the 
deceased  in  the  other  world,  such  as  his  crown,  turbans, 
clothes  of  all  descriptions,  gold,  silver,  and  other  i)reeious 
articles,  rice  and  other  provisions."  Meals  were  set  out  near 
the  coffin,  and  there  was  a  framed  piece  of  damask  with 
woollen  characters,  the  abode  of  one  of  the  souls  of  the 
defunct.  In  the  tomb,  an  enclosed  edifice  of  stone,  tlie 
childless  wives  of  the  deceased  were  to  be  perpetuiiUy  sliut 
up  to  guard  the  sepulchre,  "  and  prepare  daily  the  food  and 
other  things  of  which  they  think  the  deceased  has  need  in 
the  other  life."  At  the  time  of  the  deposit  of  the  cofhn  in 
a  cavern  behind  the  tomb  building,  there  were  burnt  there 
great  piles  of  boats,  stages,  and  everything  used  in 
the  funeral,  '*  and  moreover  of  all  the  objects  which  had 
been  in  use  by  the  king  during  his  lifetime,  of  chessmen, 
musical  instruments,  fans,  boxes,  parasols,  mats,  fillets, 
carriages,  &c.  &c.,  and  likewise  a  horse  and  an  elephant  of 
wood  and  pasteboard."  *'  Some  months  after  the  funeral,  at 
two  different  times,  there  were  constructed  in  a  forest  near 
a  pagoda  two  magnificent  palaces  of  wood  with  rich  furnish- 
ings, in  all  things  similar  to  the  jialace  which  the  defunct 
monarch  had  inhabited.  Each  palace  was  composed  of 
twenty  rooms,  and  the  most  scrupulous  attention  was  given 
in  order  that  nothing  might  be  awanting  necessary  for  a 

'  'Jourii.  Inil.  Aiiliip.'  voL  ii  p.  691  ;  seo  vol.  i.  pp.  297,  3i9. 


490 


ANIMISM. 


Ill  I' 


'^a 


•■I  m 


palace,  and  these  palaces  were  burned  with  great  pomp,  and 
it  is  thus  that  immense  riches  have  been  given  to  the  flames 
from  the  foolish  belief  that  it  would  serve  the  dead  in  the 
other  world."  ^ 

Though  the  custom  is  found  among  the  Beduins  of  array- 
ing the  dead  with  turban,  girdle,  and  sword,  yet  funeral 
offerings  for  the  service  of  the  dead  are  by  no  means  con- 
spicuous among  Semitic  nations.  The  mention  of  the  rite 
b}'-  Ezekiel,  while  showing  a  full  sense  of  its  meaning, 
characterizes  it  as  not  Israelite,  but  Gentile  :  "  The  mighty 
fallen  of  the  uncircumcised,  which  are  gone  down  to  Hades 
with  weapons  of  war,  and  they  have  laid  their  swords  under 
their  heads."  ^  Among  the  Aryan  nations,  on  the  contrary, 
such  funeral  offerings  are  known  to  have  prevailed  widely 
and  of  old,  while  for  picturesqucncss  of  rite  and  definite- 
ness  of  purpose  they  can  scarcely  be  surpassed  even  among 
savnges.  Why  the  Brahman's  sacrificial  instruments  are  to 
be  burnt  with  him  on  the  funeral  pile,  appears  from  this  line 
of  theVeda  recited  at  the  ceremony  :  "  Yada  gachchatyasuni- 
timetamatha  devanam  vasanirbhavati," — "  When  he  cometb 
unto  that  life,  faithfully  will  he  do  the  service  of  the  gods."^ 
Lucian  is  sarcastic,  but  scarcely  unfair,  in  his  comments  on 
the  Greek  funeral  rites,  sjieaking  of  those  who  slew  horses 
and  slave-girls,  and  cupbearers,  and  burned  or  buried  clothes 
and  ornaments,  as  for  use  and  service  in  the  world  below  ;  of 
the  meat  and  drink  offerings  on  the  tombs  which  serve  to 
feed  the  bodiless  shades  in  Hades  ;  of  the  splendid  garments 
and  the  garlands  of  the  dead,  that  they  might  not  suffer  cold 
upon  the  road,  nor  be  seen  naked  by  Kerberos.  For  Ker- 
beros  was  intended  the  honey-cake  deposited  with  the  dead  ; 
and  the  obolus  placed  in  the  mouth  was  the  toll  for  Charon, 
save  at  Hermione  in  Argolis,  where  men  thought  there  was 

'  BasH"  ..  '  Psychologie,' p.  89  ;  '  Journ.  Ind.  Archip.'  vol.  iii.  p.  337.  For 
other  1..  t  I'.ices,  see  Bastian,  '  Mensch, '  vol.  ii.  p.  332,  etc.  ;  Alger,  'Futiiio 
Life,'  part  ii. 

2  Klemni,  '0.  G.'  vol.  iv.  p.  159  ;  Ezek.  xxxii.  27. 

•''  Max  Miiller,  '  Todtenbcstattung  der  Brahraanen,'  in  D.  M.  Z.  voL  ix 
p.  viL-xiv. 


» 


ANI>nSM. 


4yi 


omp,  an^ 
he  flames 
ad  in  the 

5  of  array- 
et  funeral 
leans  con- 
of  the  rite 

meaning, 
'he  migiity 
n  to  Hades 
rords  under 
le  contrary, 
xiled  widely 
nd  definite- 
even  among 
iuents  are  to 
•om  this  line 
hchatyasuni- 
iU  ho  cometh 
f  the  gods."^ 
comments  on 
.)  slew  horses 
)uried  clothes 
lid  helow ;  of 

hich  serve  to 
idid  garments 
not  suffer  cold 
)s.     For  Ker- 

ith  the  dead ; 

)11  for  Charon, 

Lght  there  was 

„iu.p.337.     For 
B.  ;  Alger,  'Futuvo 

D.  M.  Z-  vo^  ^ 


a  short  descent  to  Hades,  and  therefore  provided  the  dead 
with  no  coin  for  the  grim  ferryman.  How  such  ideas  could 
be  realized,  may  be  seen  in  the  story  of  Eukrates,  whose 
dead  wife  appeared  to  him  to  demand  one  of  her  golden 
sandals,  which  had  been  dropped  underneath  the  chest,  and 
so  not  burnt  for  her  with  the  rest  of  her  wardrobe  ;  or  in 
the  story  of  Periander,  whose  dead  wife  Melissa  refused  to 
give  him  an  oracular  response,  for  she  was  shivering  and 
naked,  because  the  garments  buried  with  her  had  not  been 
burnt,  and  so  were  of  no  use,  wherefore  Periander  plundered 
the  Corinthian  women  of  their  best  clothes,  burned  them  in 
a  great  trench  with  prayer,  and  now  obtained  his  answer.^ 
The  ancient  Gauls  were  led,  by  their  belief  in  another  life, 
to  burn  and  bury  with  the  dead  things  suited  to  the  living ; 
nor  is  the  record  improbable  that  they  transferred  to  tlie 
world  below  the  repayment  of  loans,  for  even  in  modern 
centuries  the  Japanese  would  borrow  money  in  tliis  life,  to 
be  repaid  with  heavy  interest  in  the  next.^  The  souls  of  the 
Norse  dead  took  with  them  from  their  earthly  home  servants 
and  horses,  boats  and  ferry-money,  clothes  and  weapons. 
Thus,  in  death  as  in  life,  they  journeyed,  following  the  long 
dark  "hell-way"  (heLegr).  The  "*  hell-shoon  "  (helsko) 
were  bound  upon  the  dead  man's  feet  for  the  toilsome 
journey ;  and  when  King  Harald  was  slain  in  the  battle  of 
Bravalla,  they  drove  his  war-chariot,  with  the  corpse  upon  it, 
into  the  great  burial-mound,  and  there  they  killed  the  horse, 
and  King  Hring  gave  his  own  saddle  beside,  that  the  fallen 
chief  might  ride  or  drive  to  Wallialla,  as  it  pleased  him.^ 
Lastly,  in  the  Lithuanian  and  Old  Prussian  district,  where 
Aryan  heathendom  held  its  place  in  Europe  so  firmly  and  so 
late,  accounts  of  funeral  sacrifice  of  men,  and  beasts,  and 
things,  date  on  even  beyond  the  middle  ages.     Even  as  they 

•  Lucian.  De  Luctu,  9,  etc.  ;  Philopspiules,  27 ;  Strabo,  viii.  6,  12 ;  Hevodot. 
V.  92  ;  Smith's  '  Din.  Gr.  and  Rom.  Ant.'  art.  '  funus.' 

'  Valer.  Max.  ii. ;  Mela,  iii.  2.  Froius  (1565)  in  Maffei,  Histor.  Indicarum, 
lib.  iv. 

3  Grimm,  Verbrennen  der  Leichen,'  pp.  232,  etc.,  247,  etc.  ;  '  Deutsche 
Myth.'  pp.  796-800. 


492 


ANIMISM. 


i    ' 


I      !' 


thought  th:it  men  would  live  again  in  the  resurrection  rich 
or  poor,  noble  or  peasant,  as  on  earth,  so  *  *  they  believed 
that  the  things  burned  would  rise  again  with  them,  and  sei've 
them  as  before."  Among  these  people  lived  the  Kriwe  Kri- 
weito,  the  great  priest,  whose  house  was  on  the  high  steep 
mountain  Anafielas.  All  the  souls  of  their  dead  must 
clamber  up  this  mountain,  wherefore  the}'  burned  with  them 
claws  of  bears  and  lynxes  for  their  help.  All  the  souls 
must  pass  through  the  Kriwe's  house,  and  he  could  describe 
to  the  surviving  relatives  of  each  the  clothes,  and  horse,  and 
weapons  he  had  seen  hira  come  with,  and  even  show,  for 
greater  certainty,  some  mark  made  with  lance  or  other 
instrument  by  the  passing  soul.^  Such  examples  of  funeral 
rites  show  a  common  ceremony,  and  to  a  great  degree  a 
common  purpose,  obtaining  from  savagery  through  bar- 
barism, and  even  into  the  higher  civilization.  Now  could 
we  have  required  from  all  these  races  a  distinct  answer  to 
the  question,  whether  they  believed  in  spirits  of  all  things, 
from  men  and  beasts  down  to  spears  and  cloaks,  sticks  and 
stones,  it  is  likely  that  we  might  have  often  received  the 
same  acknowledgment  of  fully  developed  animism  which 
stands  on  record  in  North  America,  Polynesia,  and  Birmah. 
Failing  such  direct  testimony,  it  is  at  least  justifiable  to  say 
that  the  lower  culture,  by  practically  dealing  with  object- 
souls,  goes  far  towards  acknowledging  their  existence. 

Before  quitting  the  discussion  of  funeral  offerings  for 
transmission  to  the  dead,  the  custom  must  be  traced  to  its 
final  decay.  It  is  apt  not  to  die  out  suddenly,  but  to  leave 
surviving  remnants,  more  or  less  dwindled  in  form  and 
changed  in  meaning.  The  Kanowits  of  Borneo  talk  of 
setting  a  man's  property  adrift  for  use  in  the  next  world, 
and  even  go  so  far  as  to  lay  out  his  valuables  by  the  bier, 
but  m  fact  they  only  commit  to  the  frail  canoe  a  few  old 

'  Dusliurg,  'Chroiiicon  Pnissire,'  iiL  c.  v.  ;  Hanusch,  'Slaw.  Myth.' pp. 
898,  414  (Anafielas  is  the  glass-mountain  of  Slavonic  and  German  myth,  sea 
Grimm,  '  D.  M.'  p.  796).  Compare  statement  in  St.  Clair  and  Brophy, 
*  Bulgaria,'  p.  61  ;  as  to  food  transmitted  to  dead  in  other  world,  with  more 
probable  explanation,  p.  77. 


•^v 


ANIMISM. 


403 


rection  rich 
ley  believed 
a,  and  serve 

Kriwe  Kri- 
3  high  steep 

dead    must 
d  Avith  them 
.11  the  souls 
,uld  describe 
d  horse,  and 
en  show,  for 
ice  or  other 
Les  of  funeral 
•eat  degree  a 
through  bar- 
Now  could 
ict  answer  to 
of  all  things, 
ks,  sticks  and 

received  the 
limism  which 
,  and  Birmah. 
itifiable  to  say 
I  with  object- 
cistence. 

1  offerings  for 

2  traced  to  its 
y,  but  to  leave 

in  form  and 
Borneo  talk  of 
he  next  world, 
es  by  the  bier, 
anoe  a  few  old 

'  Slaw.  Myth.'  pp. 
i  German  myth,  sea 

Clair  and  lirophy, 
,er  world,  with  more 


tilings  not  worth  plundering.^     So  in  North  America,  the 
funei       sacrifice    of  the  Winnel)agos   has  come   down   lo 
burying  a  pipe  and  tobacco  with  the  dead,  and  sometimes  a 
club  in  a  warrior's  grave,  while  the  goods  brought  and  hung 
up  at  the  burial-place  are  no  longer  left  there,  but  the  sui° 
vivors  gamble  for  them.^     The  Santals  of  Bengal  put  two 
vessels,  one  for  rice  and  the  otlier  for  water,  on  the  dead 
man's  couch,  with  a  few  rupees,  to  enable  him  to  appease 
the  demons  on  the  threshold  of  the  shadowy  world,  but 
when  the  funeral  pile  is  ready  these  things  are  remo'vod.^ 
The  fanciful  art  of  replacing  costly  otl'erings  by  worthhss 
imitations   is    at   this   day  worked  out  into   the  quaintest 
devices  in  China.     As  the  men  and  horses  disi)atched  by 
fire  for  the  service  of  the  dead  are  but  paper  figures,  so 
offerings  of  clothes  and  money  may  be  represented  likewise. 
The  imitatii)ns  of  Spanish  pillar-dollars  in  i)asteboard  co- 
vered with  tinfoil,  the  sheets  of  tinfoil-paper  whi.h   stand 
for  silver  money,  and  if  coloured  yellow  for  gold,  are  con- 
sumed in  such  quantities  that  the  sham  becomes  a  serious 
reality,  for  the  manufacture  of  mock-money  is  the  trade  of 
thousands  of  women  and  children  in  a  Chinese  city.     In  a 
similar  way  trunks  full  of  property  are  forwarded  in   the 
care  of  the  newly  deceased,  to  friends  who  are  gone  before. 
Pretty  paper  houses,  "  replete  with  every  luxury,"  as  our 
auctioneers  say,  are  burnt  for  the  dead  Chinaman  to  live  in 
hereafter,  and  the  paper  keys  are  burnt  also,  that  he  may 
unfasten  the  paper  locks  of  the  paper  chests  that  hold  the 
ingots  of  gold-paper  and  silver-paper,  which  are  to  be  real- 
ised as  current  gold  and  silver  in  the  other  world,  an  idea 
which,  however,  does  not  prevent  the  careful  survivors  from 
collecting  the  ashes  to  re-extract  the  tin  from  them  in  this.^ 


»  St.  John,  '  Far  East,'  vol.  i.  pp.  54,  68.     Compare  Bosmaii,  '  Guinea,'  in 
Pinlcerton,  vol.  xvi.  p.  4>0. 

*  Sclioolcraft,  'Iinlian  Tribes,'  partly,  p.  64. 

*  Hunter,  'Rural  lieiigal,'  p.  210. 

*  Davis,  'Chinese, 'vol.  i,  p.  276  ;  Doolittle,  vol.  i.  p.  193  ;  vol.  ii.  p.  276 
Bastian,  '  Meiisch,'  vol.  ii.  p.  334  ;  see  Marco  Polo,  L-ok  ii.  ch.  Ixviii. 


494 


ANIMISM. 


/;  'tin 


■i  I  4 


Again,  when  the  modern  Hindu  offers  to  his  dead  parent 
funeral  cakes  with  flowers  and  betel,  he  presents  a  woollen 
yarn  which  he  lays  across  the  cake,  and  naming  the  deceased 
says,  "  May  this  apparel,  made  of  woollen  yarn,  be  accept- 
able to  thee."^  Sucli  facts  as  these  suggest  a  symbolic 
meaning  in  the  practically  useless  oflerings  which  Sir  John 
Lubbock  groups  together — the  little  models  of  kayaks  and 
spears  in  Esquimaux  graves,  the  models  of  objects  in 
Egyptian  tombs,  and  the  flimsy  unserviceable  jewelry 
buried  with  the  Etruscan  dead.^ 

Just  as  people  in  Borneo,  after  they  had  become  Moham- 
medans, still  kept  up  the  rite  of  burying  provisions  for  the 
dead  man's  journey,  as  a  mark  of  respect,^  so  the  rite  of 
interring  objects  with  the  dead  survived  in  Christian  Europe. 
As  the  Greeks  gave  the  dead  man  the  obolus  for  Charon's 
toll,  and  the  old  Prussians  furnished  him  with  spending- 
money  to  buy  refreshment  on  his  weary  journey,  so  to  this 
day  German  peasants  bury  a  corpse  with  money  in  his  mouth 
or  hand,  a  fourpenny-piece  or  so,  while  the  placing  of  the 
coin  in  the  dead  man's  hand  is  a  regular  ceremony  of  an 
Irish  wake,  and  similar  little  funeral  off'erings  of  coin  are 
recorded  in  the  folklore-books  elsewhere  in  Europe.*  Christ- 
ian funeral  offerings  of  this  kind  are  mostly  trifling  in 
value,  and  doubtful  as  to  the  meaning  with  which  they  were 
kept  up.  The  early  Christians  retained  the  heathen  cus- 
tom of  placing  in  the  tomb  such  things  as  articles  of  the 
toilette  and  children's  playthings ;  modern  Greeks  would 
place  oars  on  a  shipman's  grave,  and  other  such  tokens  for 
other  crafts ;  the  beautiful  classic  rite  of  scattering  flowers 


(■  i 


fh:   ':'M 


•  Colebrooke,  'Essays,' vol,  i.  pp.  161,  169. 

■^  Lubbock,  'Prehistoric  Times,' p.  142;  Wilkinson,  'Ancient  Eg.' vol.  ii. 
p.  31  y. 

*  Meeckinann,  •  Voy.  to  Borneo,'  in  Piiikerton,  vol.  xi.  p.  110. 

■•  Hartknoch,  'Alt,  und  Ncuos  Preussen,' part  i.  p.  181  ;  Grimm,  'D.  M.* 
pp.  791-5  ;  Wuttke,  '  Deutsi;he  Volksaberglaube,'  p,  212  ;  Kochholz,  '  Deut- 
Bclier  Glaube,'  etc,  vol.  1,  p.  187,  etc, ;  Maury,  'Magie,'  etc,  p,  168  (France) ; 
Brand,  '  Pop.  Ant,'  vol.  ii.  p.  285  (Ireland). 


ANIMISA 


495 


dead  parent 
its  a  woollen 
the  deceased 
a,  be  accept- 
a  symbolic 
ieh  Sir  John 
f  kayaks  and 
f  objects  in 
able    jewelry 

ome  Moham- 
sions  for  the 
o  the  rite  of 
stian  Europe. 

for  Charon's 
ith  spending- 
ley,  so  to  this 
( in  his  mouth 
lacing  of  the 
iremony  of  an 
p,  of  coin  are 
rope.*  Christ- 
itly  trifling  in 
lich  they  were 

heathen  cus- 
articles  of  the 
Greeks  would 
uch  tokens  for 
ttering  flowers 


Lncient  Eg.'  vol.  ii. 

p.  110. 
;  Grimm,  'D.  M.' 
;  Kochholz,  •  Deut- 
tc.  p.  168  (France) ; 


over  the  dead  still  h.     .:,  its  pJ  ..e  in  Europe.'     AVhatever 

may  have  been  the       jughts  •   ,iicli  first  prompted  these 

kindly  ceremonies,    t     y   were    thoughts   belonging  to  far 

proe- Christian  ages.     The  change  of  sacrifice  from  its  early 

significance  is  shown  among  the  Hindus,  who  have  turned 

it  to  account  for  purposes  of   priestcraft:    he  who  gives 

water  or  shoes  to  a  Brahman  will  find  water  to  refresh  him, 

and  shoes  to  wear,  on  the  journey  to  the  next  world,  while 

the  gift  of  a  present  house  will  secure  him  a  future  palace.' 

In  interesting  correspondence  with  this,  is  a  transition  from 

pagan  to  Christian  folklore  in  our  own  land.     The  Lyke- 

Wake  Dirge,  the  not  yet  forgotten  funeral  chant  of  the  North 

Country,  tells,  hke  some  savage  or  barbaric  legend,  of  the 

passage  over  the  Bridge  of  Death  and  the  dreadful  journey 

to  the  other  world.     But  though  the  ghostly  traveller's  feet 

are  still  shod  with  the  old  Norseman's  hell-shoon,  he  gains 

them  no  longer  by  funeral  ofiering,  but  by  his  own  charity 

in  life : — 

*'  This  a  nighte,  this  a  nighte 
Every  night  and  alle ; 
Fire  and  fleet  and  candle-light, 
And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

When  thou  from  hence  away  are  paste 

Every  night  and  alle ; 
To  Whinny-moor  thou  comes  at  laste, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  ever  thou  gave  either  hosen  or  shoon. 

Every  night  and  alle ; 
Sit  thee  down  and  put  them  on, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

But  if  hosen  nor  shoon  thou  never  gave  neeaa 

Every  night  and  alle; 
The  Whinnes  shall  prick  thee  to  the  bare  beean, 

And  Christe  receive  thj'  saule. 

*  Maitland,  'Church  in  the  Catacomb8,' p.  137;  Forbea  Lealie^  toL  iL 
S02 ;  Meiners,  vol.  ii.  p.  760  ;  Brand,  '  Pop.  Ant'  voL  iL  p.  807. 

•  Ward,  'Hindoos,' vol  11.  p.  284. 


496 


ANIMISM. 


67    .'I 


I 


From  ■\Vhinny-moore  when  thou  may  paSM. 

Evoiy  night  and  alle ; 
To  Brig  o'  Dread  thou  comes  at  lasto* 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

From  Brig  o'  Dread  when  thou  are  paste, 

Every  night  and  alle ; 
To  Purgatory  Fire  thou  comes  at  laste, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

If  ever  thou  gave  either  milke  or  drink, 

Every  nij>ht  and  alle ; 
The  fire  sliall  never  make  thee  shrinke, 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule. 

But  if  milk  nor  drink  thou  never  gave  neean, 

Every  night  aiid  alle ; 
The  fire  shall  burn  thee  to  the  bare  beean 

And  Christe  receive  thy  saule."  * 

What  reader,  unacquainted  with  the  old  doctrine  of  offer- 
ings for  the  dead,  could  realize  the  meaning  of  its  remnants 
thus  linjiermg  in  peasants'  minds  ?  The  survivals  from 
ancient  funeral  ceremony  may  here  again  sei-ve  as  warnings 
against  attempting  to  explain  relics  of  intellectual  an- 
tiquity by  viewing  them  from  the  changed  level  of  modern 
opinion. 

Having  thus  surveyed  at  large  the  theory  of  spirits  or 
souls  of  objects,  it  remains  to  point  out  what,  to  general 
students,  may  seem  the  most  important  consideration  be- 
longing to  it,  namely,  its  close  relation  to  one  of  the  most 

*  From  the  collated  and  annotated  text  in  J.  C.  Atkinson,  'Glossary  of 
Cleveland  Dialect,'  p.  595  (a  =  onc,  nucan^none,  bcean  =  bone).  Other  versions 
in  Scott,  '  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scoitish  Border,'  vol.  ii,  p.  367  ;  Kelly,  '  Imlo- 
Euroiiean  Folklore,'  p.  115;  Brand,  'Pop.  Ant.' vol.  ii.  p.  275.  Two  verses 
have  perhaps  been  lost  between  the  liftix  and  sixth.  J.  C.  A.  reads  '  meate  ' 
in  vv.  7  and  8  ;  the  usual  reading  '  niilke '  is  retained  here.  The  sense  of 
these  two  verses  may  be  that  the  liquor  sacrificed  in  life  will  quench  the  fire  : 
an  idea  parallel  to  that  known  to  folklore,  that  he  who  gave  breail  in  his  life- 
time will  find  it  after  death  ready  for  him  to  cast  into  the  hellhound's  jaws 
(Maunhardt,  '  Gotterwelt  der  Deutschen  und  Nordischen  Volker,'  p.  319),  « 
sop  to  Cerberus. 


ANIMISM. 


tift 


3an, 


octrine  of  offer- 
of  its  remnants 
survivals  from 
rve  as  warnings 
intellectual  an- 
level  of  modern 

ory  of  spirits  or 
what,  to  general 
onsicleration  be- 
one  of  the  most 

Ltkinson,  '  Glossary  of 
:b(me).  Other  versions 
p.  367  ;  KeUy,  '  In.lo- 
..  p.  275.     Two  verses 
r.  C.  A.  reads  *  meate ' 
I  here.     The  sense  o( 
e  will  quench  the  fire  : 
gave  bread  in  his  life- 
j  the  hellhound's  jaws 
hen  Volker,'  p.  319),  ■ 


iuHiiPntial  doctrines  of  civilized  philosophy.  The  savage 
thinker,  though  occupying  himself  so  much  with  the  pheno- 
mena of  life,  sleep,  disease,  and  death,  seems  to  have  tak(>n 
for  granted,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the  ordinary  operations  of 
his  own  mind.  It  hardly  occurred  to  him  to  think  about  the 
machinery  of  thinking.  Metapliysics  is  a  study  which  first 
assumes  clear  sliape  at  a  comparatively  high  level  of  intellec- 
tual culture.  The  metaphysical  philosophy  of  thought  taught 
in  our  modern  European  lecture-rooms  is  historically  traced 
back  to  the  speculative  psychology  of  classic  Greece.  Now 
one  doctrine  which  there  comes  into  view  is  especially  asso- 
ciated with  the  name  of  Democritus,  the  philosopher  of 
Abdera,  in  the  fifth  century  B.C.  When  Democritus  pro- 
pounded the  great  problem  of  metaphysics,  "  How  do  we 
perceive  external  things?" — thus  making,  as  Lewes  says, 
an  era  in  the  history  of  philosophy, — he  put  forth,  in 
answer  to  the  question,  a  theory  of  thought.  lie  exi)lain(>d 
the  fact  of  pen-eption  by  declaring  thiit  things  are  always 
throwing  ofi'  images  (et8a)Aa)  of  themselves,  which  images, 
assimilatiii'  to  themselves  the  surrounding  air,  enter  a  re- 
cipient soul,  and  are  thus  perceived.  Now,  supposing  Demo- 
critus to  have  been  really  the  originator  of  this  famed  theory 
of  ideas,  how  far  is  he  to  be  considered  its  inventor? 
AVriters  on  the  history  of  philosophy  are  accustomed  to 
treat  the  doctrine  as  actually  made  by  the  philosophical 
school  which  taught  it.  Yet  the  evidence  here  brought  for- 
ward shows  it  to  be  rcall}-  the  savage  doctrine  of  object- 
souls,  turned  to  a  new  purpose  as  a  method  of  explaining 
the  phenomena  of  thought.  Nor  is  the  correspondence  a 
mere  coincidence,  for  nt  this  point  of  junction  between 
classic  religion  and  classic  philosophy  the  traces  of  histo- 
rical continuity  may  be  still  discerned.  To  say  that  De- 
mocritus was  an  ancient  Greek  is  to  say  tliat  from  his 
childhood  he  had  looked  on  at  the  funeral  ceremonies  of  his 
country,  beholding  the  funeral  sacrifices  of  garments  and 
jewels  and  money  and  food  and  drink,  rites  which  his 
mother  and  his  nurse  could  tell  him  were  performed   in 

VOL.    I.  K    K 


498 


ANIMISM. 


'!H 


i   I 

i  ''■ 
i 


order  that  the  phantasmal  imaj^es  of  these  objects  raiglit 
pass  into  the  possession  of  forms  shadowy  like  themselves, 
the  souls  of  dead  men.  Thus  Democritus,  seeking  a  solu- 
tion of  his  great  problem  of  the  nature  of  thought,  found 
it  by  simply  decanting  into  his  metaphysics  a  surviving 
doctrine  of  primitive  savage  animism.  This  thought  of 
the  phantoms  or  souls  of  things,  if  simply  modified  to  form 
a  philosophical  theory  of  perception,  would  then  and  there 
become  his  doctrine  of  Ideas.  Nor  does  even  this  fully 
represent  the  closeness  of  union  which  connects  the  savage 
doctrine  of  flitting  object-souls  with  the  Epicurean  philo- 
sophy. Lucretius  actually  makes  the  theory  of  film-like 
images  of  things  (simulacra,  membranse)  account  both  for 
the  apparitions  which  come  to  men  in  dreams,  and  the 
images  which  impress  their  minds  in  thinking.  So  un- 
broken is  the  continuity  of  philosophic  speculation  from 
savage  to  cultured  thought.  Such  are  the  debts  which  civi- 
lized philosophy  owes  to  primitive  animism. 

Tlie  doctrine  of  ideas,  thus  developed  in  the  classic  world, 
has,  indeed,  by  no  means  held  its  course  thenceforth  un- 
changed through  metaphysics,  but  has  undergone  transition 
somewhat  like  that  of  the  doctrine  of  the  soul  itself.  Ideas, 
fined  down  to  the  abstract  forms  or  species  of  material  ob- 
jects,  and  applied  to  other  than  visible  qualities,  have  at 
last,  come  merely  to  denote  subjects  of  thought.  Yet  to 
this  day  the  old  theory  has  not  utterly  died  out,  and  the 
retention  of  the  significant  term  '*  idea "  {Ibia,  visible 
form)  is  accompanied  by  a  similar  retention  of  original 
meaning.  It  is  still  one  of  the  tasks  of  the  metaphysician 
to  disjjlay  and  refute  the  old  notion  of  ideas  as  being  real 
images,  and  to  replace  it  by  more  abstract  conceptions.  It 
is  a  striking  instance  that  Dugald  Stewart  can  cite  from  the 
works  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  the  following  distinct  recognition 
of  "  sensible  species  :"  "Is  not  the  sensorium  of  animals, 
the  place  where  the  sentient  substance  is  present ;  and  to 
which  the  sensible  species  of  things  are  brought,  through 
the  nerves  and  brain,  that  there  they  may  be  perceived  by  the 


ANIMISM. 


499 


objects  iniglit 
ike  themselves, 
seeking  a  solu- 
thouglit,  found 
ics  a  surviving 
'his  thought  of 
nodified  to  form 
then  and  there 
even  this  fully 
lects  the  savage 
Ipicurean  philo- 
ory  of  film-like 
Lccount  both  for 
[reams,  and  the 
inking.     So  un- 
5peculation  from 
debts  which  civi- 
i. 
the  classic  world, 

thenceforth  un- 
ergone  transition 
3ul  itself.    Ideas, 
s  of  material  ob- 
qualities,  have  at 
thought.     Yet  to 
lied  out,  and  the 
,a"    (iSe'o,  visible 
ntion  of   original 
the  metaphysician 
leas  as  being  real 
t  conceptions.     It 
;  can  cite  from  the 
istinct  recognition 
orium  of  animals, 
8  present;  and  to 

brought,  through 
be  perceived  by  the 


mind  present  in  that  place  ?"  Again,  Dr.  Reid  states  the 
original  theory  of  ideas,  wliile  declaring  tliat  he  conceivea 
it  "to  have  no  solid  foiindution,  though  it  hiis  been  adopted 

very  generally  by  philosophers This  notion  of  our 

perceiving  external  objects,  not  immediately,  but  in  certain 
images  or  species  of  them  convoyed  by  the  senses,  seems 
to  be  the  most  ancient  philosophical  hypothesis  we  have  on 
the  subject  of  perception,  and  to  have,  with  snjall  varia- 
tions, retained  its  authority  to  this  day."  Granted  that 
Dr.  Reid  exaggerated  the  extent  to  which  metapliysicians 
have  kept  up  the  notion  of  ideas  as  real  images  of  things, 
few  will  deny  that  it  does  linger  much  in  modern  minds, 
and  that  people  who  talk  of  ideas  do  often,  in  some  hazy 
metaphorical  way,  think  of  sensible  images.'  One  of  the 
shrewdest  things  ever  said  about  either  ideas  or  ghosts  was 
Bishop  Berkeley's  retort  upon  Halloy,  who  bantered  him 
about  his  idealism.  The  bisliop  claimed  tlie  mathematician 
as  an  idealist  also,  his  "  ultimate  ratios  "  being  ghosts  of 
departed  qua)itities,  appearing  when  the  terms  that  pro- 
duced them  vanished. 

It  remains  to  sum  up  in  few  words  the  doctrine  of  souls, 
in  the  various  pliascs  it  has  assumed  from  first  to  last  among 
mankind.  In  the  attempt  to  trace  its  main  course  through 
the  successive  grades  of  man's  intellectual  history,  the  evi- 
dence seems  to  accord  best  with  a  theory  of  its  development, 
somewhat  to  the  following  effect.  At  the  lowest  levels  of 
culture  of  which  we  have  clear  knowledge,  the  notion  of  a 
ghost-soul  animating  man  while  in  the  body,  and  appearing 
in  dream  and  vision  out  of  the  body,  is  found  deeply  in- 
grained.  There  is  no  reason  to  think  that  tliis  behef  was 
learnt  by  savage  tribes  from  contact  with  higlui-  races,  nor 
that  it  is  a  relic  of  higher  culture  from  which  the  savage 
tribes  have  degenerated ;  for  what  is  here  treated  as  the 

'  Lewes,  '  Hiofrraphical  History  of  Pliilo.sopliy,  Deniocvitus'  (and  see  his 
remarks  on  Rfid) ;  Lucretius,  lib.  iv. ;  '  Early  Hist,  of  Mankind,'  p.  8 ;  Stewart, 
•  Philosophy  of  Human  Mind,'  vol.  i.  cliaj..  i.  seci.  2  ;  Kuid,  '  Kssays,'  ii.  chaps 
iv.  liv. ;  see  Thos.  Browne,  •  Philosophy  of  the  Mind,'  lect.  21. 

K  K  2 


500 


ANIMISM. 


)  <' 


primitive  animistic  doctrine  is  thoroughly  at  home  amon^ 
savages,  who  appear  to  hold  it  on  the  very  evidence  of  tlieir 
senses,  interpreted  on  the  biological  principle  which  seems 
to  them  most  reasonable.  We  may  now  and  then  hear  the 
savage  doctrines  and  practices  concerning  souls  claimed  as 
relics  of  a  high  religious  culture  pervading  the  primaeval 
race  of  man.  They  are  said  to  be  traces  of  remote  ancestral 
religion,  kept  up  in  scanty  and  perverted  memory  by  tribes 
degraded  from  a  nobler  state.  It  is  easj'  to  see  that  such 
an  exjjlanation  of  some  few  facts,  sundered  from  tlieir  con- 
nexion with  the  general  array,  may  seem  plausible  to  certain 
minds.  But  a  large  view  of  the  subject  can  hardly  leave 
such  argument  in  possession.  The  animism  of  savages 
stands  for  and  by  itself;  it  explains  its  own  origin.  The 
animism  of  civilized  men,  while  more  appropriate  to  ad- 
vanced knowledge,  is  in  great  measure  only  explicable  as  a 
developed  product  of  the  older  and  ruder  system.  It  is  tlie 
doctrines  and  rites  of  the  lower  races  which  are,  according 
to  tlieir  philosophy,  results  of  point-blank  natural  evidence 
and  acts  of  straightforward  practical  purpose.  It  is  the 
doctrines  and  rites  of  the  higlier  races  which  show  survival 
of  the  old  in  the  midst  of  the  new,  modification  of  the  old 
to  bring  it  into  conformity  with  the  new,  abandonment  of 
the  old  because  it  is  no  longer  compatible  with  the  new. 
Let  us  see  at  a  glance  in  what  general  relation  the  doctrine 
of  souls  among  savage  tribes  stands  to  the  doctrine  of  souls 
among  barbaric  and  cultured  nations.  Among  races  within 
the  limits  of  savagery,  the  general  doctrine  of  souls  is  found 
worked  out  with  remarkable  breadth  and  consistency.  The 
souls  of  animals  are  recognized  by  a  natural  extension  from 
the  theory  of  human  souls ;  the  souls  of  trees  and  plants 
follow  in  some  vague  partial  way ;  and  the  souls  of  inani- 
mate objects  expand  the  general  category'  to  its  extremest 
boundary.  Thenceforth,  as  we  explore  human  thought 
onward  from  savage  into  barbarian  and  civilized  life,  we 
find  a  state  of  theory  more  conformed  to  positive  science, 
but  in  itself  less  complete  and  consistent.     Far  on  into 


ANIMISM. 


501 


it  home  amons 
vndence  of  their 
lie  which  seems 
I  then  hear  the 
ouls  chiimed  as 
tg  the  primaeval 
remote  ancestral 
aemory  hy  tribes 
to  see  that  such 
d  from  their  con- 
ausible  to  certain 
t  can  hardly  leave 
niism  of   savages 
own  origin.     The 
ppropri.vte  to  ad- 
\y  explicable  as  a 
system.     It  is  the 
lich  are,  according 
.k  natural  evidence 
urpose.     It  is  the 
hich  show  survival 
ideation  of  the  old 
,w,  abandonment  of 
.tible  with  the  new. 
elation  the  doctrine 
le  doctrine  of  souls 
Among  races  within 
ine  of  souls  is  found 
i  consistency.     The 
ural  extension  from 
of  trees  and  plants 
the  souls  of  inani- 
ory  to  its  extremest 
ore   human  thought 
nd  civilized  life,  we 
d  to  positive  science, 
istent.     Far  on  ii^to 


<jlvilization,  men  still  act  as  though  in  some  hnlf-nieant  way 
they  believed  in  souls  or  ghosts  of  objects,  while  neverthe- 
less their  knowledge  of  physical  science  is  boyond  so  crude 
a  philosophy.  As  to  the  doctrine  of  souls  of  plants,  frag- 
mentary evidence  of  the  history  of  its  breaking  down  in 
Asia  has  reached  us.  In  our  own  day  and  country,  the 
notion  of  souls  of  beasts  is  to  be  seen  dying  out.  Animism, 
indeed,  seems  to  be  drawing  in  its  outposts,  and  concen- 
trating itself  on  its  first  and  main  position,  the  doctrine  of 
the  human  soul.  This  doctrine  has  undergone  extreme 
modification  in  the  course  of  culture.  It  lias  outUved  the 
almost  total  loss  of  one  great  argument  attached  to  it, — the 
objective  reality  of  npparitional  souls  or  gliosts  seen  in 
dreams  and  visions.  The  soul  has  given  up  its  ethereiil 
substance,  and  become  an  immaterial  entity,  "  the  shadow 
of  a  shade."  Its  theory  is  becomnig  separated  from  the 
investigations  of  biology  and  mental  science,  which  now 
discuss  the  phenomena  of  life  and  thought,  the  senses  and 
the  intellect,  the  emotions  and  the  will,  on  a  groundwork  of 
pure  experience.  There  has  arisen  an  intellectual  product 
whose  very  existence  is  of  the  deepest  significance,  a 
"  psychology  "  which  has  no  longer  anything  to  do  witli 
**  soul."  The  soul's  place  in  modern  thought  is  in  the 
metaphysics  of  religion,  and  its  especial  office  there  is  that 
of  furnishing  an  intellectual  side  to  the  religious  doctrine  of 
the  future  life.  Such  are  the  alterations  which  have  dif- 
ferenced the  fundamental  animistic  belief  in  its  course 
through  successive  periods  of  the  world's  culture.  Yet  it  is 
evident  that,  notwithstanding  all  this  profound  change,  the 
conception  of  the  human  soul  is,  as  to  its  most  essential 
nature,  continuous  from  the  philosophy  of  the  savage 
thinker  to  that  of  the  modern  professor  of  theology.  Its 
definition  has  remained  from  the  first  that  of  an  animating, 
separable,  surviving  entity,  the  vehicle  of  individual  personal 
existence.  The  theory  of  the  soul  is  one  principal  part  of 
a  system  of  reHgious  philosophy,  which  unites,  in  an  un- 
broken hue  of  mental  connexion,  the  savage  fetish-worshippei 

VOL.    I.  L  L 


I 


Ii-,»!l 


i    ^ 


U      i 


im 


\\\\  "I 


502 


ANIMISM. 


and  the  civilized  Christian.  The  divisions  which  have 
separated  the  great  religions  of  the  world  into  intolerant 
and  hostile  sects  are  for  the  most  part  superficial  in  com- 
parison with  the  deepest  of  all  religious  schisms,  that  which 
divides  Animism  from  Materialism. 


END  OF  VOL  I. 


livisions  which  have 
world  into  intolerant 
rt  superficial  in  com- 
s  schisms,  that  which 


? 


J 


